A day after the mass killing in Buffalo, New York last May, the video-sharing site BitChute spread a right-wing conspiracy theory that the massacre was a so-called "false flag operation" aimed at discrediting gun-loving Americans.
Three of the 15 most-viewed videos on the site that day blamed US federal agents instead of the real perpetrator: a racist teenager who vowed to "kill as many black people as possible" before shooting 13 of them, killing XNUMX.
Other popular videos uploaded to the site include those claiming that Covid-19 vaccines cause cancer that "literally eats you up" and spreading claims that Microsoft founder Bill Gates has caused a global shortage of baby food.
BitChute boomed after sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook stepped up rules to combat misinformation and hate speech. Rival site Odysee is also seeing growth. Both sites present themselves as bulwarks of freedom of speech and are at the forefront of an alternative media system that conveys ideas, once considered marginal, to millions of people.
Reuters points out that by searching the main topics on these two sites, viewers enter a labyrinth of conspiracy theories, racist insults and violence. Based on the data of the company Similarweb SMWB.N. their population has grown significantly since 2019 and is represented mainly by young men.
The damage manifests itself in the real world
Online disinformation, although usually legal, leads to harm in the real world, according to the British agency.
"Platforms like BitChute and Odyssey are having a seismic impact on the disinformation scene," Joe Onbdrak of Logically, a British company that works with governments and other organizations to mitigate the harm of disinformation, told Reuters. These sites, as he said, have become the first destination for conspiracy theorists who want to publish the footage.
BitChute and Odysee say they follow the law by, for example, removing material linked to terrorism, and have rules that prohibit racist and inciting content. At the same time, companies defend the right of extremists to express their views on their sites and downplay their content.
"BitChute North Star is about freedom of speech, which is the backbone of a free and democratic society," the company said in a statement to Reuters. Odyssey said that right-wing and conspiracy theory content does not define the platform, which they claim is focused on science and technology videos.
Despite the allegations, users regularly post openly racist videos and comments calling for violence, Reuters points out.
All social media platforms publish standards stating that they do not accept extreme or inflammatory content, said Calum Hood from the Center for Countering Digital Hate in London. “The real question is: Do they meet those standards? In the case of the BitChute and Odysee sites, the answer is categorically no”.
Some researchers claim that thanks to loose controls and rules, material is available on these sites that others would routinely reject.
"Buffalo and Bucha did not happen"
The most viewed posts about the Buffalo attack on BitChute and Odysee suggest that the massacre did not happen at all. In three of the ten most viewed clips on the Odysee website, they claim that the survivors and witnesses are actually actors. "The day of collection in the ghetto has arrived," read one of the comments. In the second video, the racist theories that motivated the attacker are defended. One viewer described the attacker as a "patriot" and the victims as "stupid blacks".
The first search result for “Covid” on BitChute is a short film called “Plandemic”. The film was banned on YouTube and Facebook due to potentially harmful misinformation, including the claim that "wearing a mask activates its own virus" and harms health. In other videos, claims are made that vaccines contain dangerous nanoparticles or that they have side effects that are like "nuclear bombs".
The situation is similar for crimes in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Nine out of the top ten search results on BitChute for "Buch massacre" state that the murders of Ukrainian citizens are a hoax for greater American involvement, or that the perpetrators are Ukrainian soldiers, British agents, or "Nazis."
BitChute and Odysee are not the only sites that spread misinformation. Social media giants like Facebook and YouTube also have trouble restricting such content, but they have adopted more aggressive content moderation policies.
More direct competition to BitChute and Odysee is Rumble, a larger video-sharing site that attracts right-wing users. Rumble also presents itself as an advocate for free speech and contains thousands of videos promoting conspiracy theories. However, Rumble has mainstream ambitions and better financial backing, and the company moderates content enough to be acceptable to the "app stores" run by Apple and Google - a key driver of growth for any digital business.
BitChute and Odysee are not the only sites that spread misinformation. Social networking giants like Facebook and YouTube also have trouble restricting such content, but they have adopted more aggressive content moderation policies.
Founded in 2013 by Chris Pawlowski, a Canadian entrepreneur, Rumble began as a hub for viral videos about children and animals. By 2020, Pavlovsky had used anti-tech sentiment to attract prominent right-wing commentators, and the following year he received the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel, an influential Republican.
Today, Rumble offers a combination of pets and politics. The company announced that the platform offers a "wide selection of information", including a channel with content from the Reuters agency. A Reuters spokesperson said that Rumble is a client that pays to publish Reuters content.
Rumble claims that their audience is growing fast because they trust adults "to form their own opinions after hearing all sides." That platform, however, limits extreme speech. A search for racist expressions on Rumbl gives the message "no videos found".
Istra search on BitChute and Odysee gives hundreds of racist videos. BitChute founder CEO Ray Vehej and Odyssey co-founder Jeremy Coffman believe their creations are a safe zone for free speech — regardless of how inaccurate or vile their content may be.
The story of the Odysee site begins with an American eccentric who likes to play frisbee and who tried to finance the site by inventing a new cryptocurrency. BitChute has its roots in northern Thailand, where a British man decided to do something about internet censorship.
"The golden age of the Internet without censorship"
Vahej, 45, is a software designer living in the suburbs of Chiang Mai. Before founding BitChute, Vehej created animations for children's songs for a YouTube channel. Those animations are also on the BitChute website under the "education" category, where there are videos about "chemtrails" - the conspiracy theory that governments secretly drop toxins from spacecraft - and security camera footage of a masked man shooting a salesman in the head in Brazil.
Vahej did not want to speak to Reuters, but in one of the recently recorded conversations with users, he recalled the "golden age" when the Internet had fewer restrictions. "It seems to me that as censorship grows, society is increasingly divided," he said.
Vahej said that he was shocked when his "platform soared like a rocket". “It was incredible. "The next day, I just had to increase the capacity. And the next day again".
Researchers believe that the platform owes its success to the famous American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. His show “Infowars” was published on BitChute in late 2017 and gained popularity after YouTube and other platforms dropped Jones the following year.
Among other things, Jones is a proponent of the theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. Twenty children and six employees were killed; and Jones claimed that their families were actors and that the shooting was a fake operation by a government that wanted to confiscate guns from citizens. Today, similar theories are circulating about the Buffalo attack.
A Texas jury recently ordered $50 million in damages to the parents of a child killed in the attack.
In an interview from December last year, Vahej said that he often hears positions on BitChute that he does not agree with, "but that is part of accepting the essence of freedom of speech." For Andy Munariz, a 53-year-old telecommunications expert and one of the company's co-founders, it was too much. He resigned in January 2019, upset about the direction BitChute was going.
"No matter what community guidelines you put in place, or how hard you work to edit and control, objectionable content will still come onto the platform under the guise of 'free speech,'" Munariz told Reuters. “Why accept that fight? BitChute is not intended to be a destination for spam, but in the real world it happens”.
The Buffalo Killer live-streamed his bloody spree on Twitch, a platform owned by Amazon AMZN.O, which quickly removed the video. However, it was reposted on BitChute, where it remained for days before being removed.
Although media regulatory agencies in Europe have demanded that BitChute protect the public from "harmful content," Reuters found that recordings on BitChute that are blocked in Europe are available in the US, where free speech protections for social media are especially strong. In addition to constitutional protections, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 stipulates that social media companies cannot be held legally responsible for the content posted by users on their platforms.
Among the content blocked in Britain but still available in America are videos with swastikas attacking Jews and blacks and montages of Adolf Hitler with the words "We need you now - happy birthday my fuhrer".
BitChute's online traffic grew by 63% in 2021 compared to the previous year, to 514 million visits. By comparison, that's twice the online audience of MSNBC.com, the website of the cable news channel known for its left-leaning hosts.
Financial problems
But BitChute's funding model seems fragile. In a December interview, Vahej said he turned down investors because he didn't want to compromise on free speech. He said he mostly covered his monthly running costs of $50.000 through donations and subscriptions. The site also has some advertisements.
Odyssey attracted 292 million visits last year, but it took a different path.
Odyssey grew out of a company called LBRI, which was founded in 2015 by Jeremy Kaufman, an American tech entrepreneur and radical libertarian who funded LBRI by creating his own cryptocurrency.
Kauffman, 37, lives in New Hampshire, where he is running a long-running campaign for the US Senate. His hardline version of the party's anti-government philosophy includes abolishing the Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service and child labor laws.
Kaufman also posts provocative statements on Twitter. “Being unvaccinated and being black are choices,” he tweeted in August 2021, with a picture of Michael Jackson. He told Reuters that the tweet "was a joke".
"No matter what community guidelines you put in place, or how hard you work to edit and control, objectionable content will still come onto the platform under the guise of 'free speech,'" Munariz told Reuters. “Why accept that fight? BitChute is not intended to be a destination for spam, but in the real world it happens”
Odysee emerged from LBRI in 2020, and got a new CEO the following year. Kaufman remained at the head of LBRI, but Odysee is now managed by Julian Chandra, who worked for TikTok.
He told Reuters that he wants Odyssey to be a profitable platform that serves a larger, mainstream audience, moving beyond Kaufman's libertarian politics and his original vision for a video-sharing site. Odisee seeks to increase revenue through advertising and ad-free premium subscriptions.
Odysee's traffic grew exponentially.
Odysee still claims to be a bastion of free speech. When YouTube removed several videos denouncing China's alleged human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims last year, Odysee provided an alternative home. He did the same for RT and Sputnik after YouTube and Facebook blocked the Russian channels in March. In a post on Twitter, the company stated: “We do not ban any news network. It's a slippery slope”.
Chandra acknowledges that there is right-wing extremist content as well as conspiracy theories on his site, but argues that this does not define the platform. He said that companies remove content that promotes terrorism, hatred or violence against groups.
Yet Odysee remains a home for neo-Nazis. Joseph Jordan, who produces recordings under the pseudonym "Eric Stryker", is one of the founders of the racist National Justice Party. In his videos on the Odysee website, he glorifies Hitler, denies that the Holocaust happened and advocates racist policies.
"What exactly do you want me to delete that person for? He did not break any law," Chandra said. "If you don't like the channel, then don't watch it. It is very simple".
Bonus video:
