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Bootstrapping Publicity

September 05, 2023

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[avatar]by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".


From 3 years ago.
Information or opinions might not be up to date.


15 Minute Read



Whether you are reading this article from my personal website or anywhere else it doesn't matter much, since I was able to post it in such a way that allowed you to find it and read it. But what if I couldn't do that? Imagine a very simple situation: An editor of a magazine writes an article that the owner of that magazine doesn't like. So he doesn't publish it. Of course that's not the end of the world. The article could be published elsewhere. But what if nobody wants this to be published? ↩ Reply

YouTube and Blogger are two large platforms for publishing videos and articles. A lot of people use those to publish things. But those people are like the editor in the example earlier. The platform might not like what those people want to say. And therefor might deny them the ability to say it. ↩ Reply

This is partially why Tor and LBRY and other similar technologies exist. Those in theory cannot deny person a publication. But with that comes a very large bootstrapping problem. ↩ Reply

Google searches, for example, do not include websites on the Tor network. And people that are mindlessly looking for something to watch will not stumble upon an Odysee publication, since they are most likely scrolling on YouTube. More than that, people are suspicious of links to websites that they never heard about. I personally known situations where people didn't open an Odysee link because they were afraid of it. Maybe this was ignorance. ↩ Reply

On the other hand with Tor's .onion links ignorant people will most likely not understand why it doesn't work. And only those who realize that they need to install a specific browser for them will be afraid of the links. Because Tor has a reputation of a very scary place. ↩ Reply

LBRY is not yet a very scary place. And it's only due to Odysee being as terrible as YouTube in censorship. Odysee is a website that is connecting to the LBRY network to retrieve publications and show them to people. But between retrieving and showing there is a step that could be inserted by Odysee. A step of censorship. Publications like that are not deleted, nor banned from LBRY. They are banned only from Odysee. Therefor to see them you might need a different LBRY app such as FastLBRY or LBRY-GTK. But most people the publisher is interested in are on Odysee. And even that is a stretch. And if their publication is not available there, it's as if it's non-existent in the first place. ↩ Reply

Most people are on YouTube. You want to target them but YouTube will ban or shadow-ban your video, so you publish to Odysee. Maybe the few people that are on Odysee at least could see it. You frown, agreeing to this drastic decrease of viewership. But then Odysee is censoring your video too. Decreasing your viewership even further to the FastLBRY users only. But what if things will go so bad that the only way to spread your message, will be to send people DVD disks with your video? What if the only way to show people your video would be to set up a screen at your window and broadcast it to the street? What if the video will never leave your computer in the first place and only you could see it? What if even you would not be able to see it? ↩ Reply

It could seem like some messages are just impossible to spread. Like the freedom of speech is successfully been reduced to non-existence without explicitly being so. But if you look at it a bit more generally, I think like it's not really the case. It's just a bootstrapping problem. ↩ Reply

↩ Reply

Sheiny: No! We are not doing this! ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: This is not illegal. We can post the trailer on YouTube. Nothing... ↩ Reply

Sheiny: YouTube is a terrible, proprietary platform! ↩ Reply

Ivan: Think about it, Sheiny. There is no way around it. You want views you go to YouTube. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: So what? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Do you want Sinking In The Fire to be watched by people or not? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We will do posters. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: One billboard costs about... ↩ Reply

Sheiny: I'm not talking about billboards. I'm talking about papers that you glue to the walls. ↩ Reply

Ivan: This is a joke! YouTube is the only... ↩ Reply

Sheiny: And how much are we going to have? 10 views? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert thought about it. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: She is right. ↩ Reply

Ivan: YouTube is currently the biggest platform. It has the most users out-there. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: And also the most videos out-there. The platform is over-saturated. ↩ Reply

Ivan: What are you talking about? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: The competition on YouTube is extreme. It's not feasible for a new channel to suddenly grow very large, because a lot of people trying to do the same thing at once. And views are finite. Even though YouTube has a lot of viewers. The amount of people trying to compete for them is too much already. We are destined to fail. Or we will need to pay for ads. Which nobody likes. ↩ Reply

Ivan: You just need to optimize for the algorithm. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Nobody knows how the damn thing works. ↩ Reply

Ivan: People reverse engineer it rather successfully. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: It changes way too often. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We can do that on our own. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: More than that. It's better to do that on our own. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Well, I don't know how it's better, but we can. We must! ↩ Reply

Ivan: I never heard of anything else, but YouTube. And gluing around posters is just pathetic. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Well, first of all, I think, we should not put obstacles in a way of the film's spreading. And I'm talking to you thus, because if I say that it's a matter of being a good person, you will laugh at me. We will go with Creative Commons. I think Share-Alike will be a good license on it. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: So anybody could steal it? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: So anybody could spread it forward. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: This will make it even worse! We have to hold to our asset. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We need to bootstrap the publication. Don't we? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Bootstrap? ↩ Reply

Sheiny though about how to explain it. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We are in a situation where nothing is moving nowhere. We have a product that we want to get "out there", but nobody knows about it. We have a snowball. It's nothing. A small snowball. What we want to do is to position it on the hill in a such a way that it will grow into a large humongous snowball. This is bootstrapping. We need to start rolling the ball. And when it will get relatively large, you will see that it's a good idea. ↩ Reply

Ivan: So how small do you want to start? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Wait. First of all the movie is not that small. It has decent effects, nice story and good amount of shocking material. This is already marketable. More than that, I have to remind you that nobody around here makes movies. If we market it for the people in here as a film made in here, it could get somewhere. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Hm... ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Sometimes when the market is over-saturated it's good to look for under-saturated markets. Here nobody makes films. So people naturally will find a film made here interesting. That same tactic will not work in Los Angeles. There the market is over-saturated. ↩ Reply

Ivan: But how many people live here? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: It's more than the three of us. And all we need to do is get the ball rolling. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Okay. But think it about it. Let's say we do the advertisement for the people here and they roll our ball. Why not also have the thing on YouTube? We can collect ad revenue. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Why not post it on Tor? We can make it sell for Bitcoins. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Because people are scared of it. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Why? ↩ Reply

Ivan: Because of the child porn! Because of the drugs! Why? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: So you are telling me that this is not a market? ↩ Reply

Ivan: How do you want to target YouTube users with Tor? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: I don't want to target YouTube users. ↩ Reply

Ivan: But you want the snowball to grow. And eventually outgrow Tor. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Not necessarily. We might grow Tor with it. And if it outgrows Tor, well fine. ↩ Reply

Ivan: So it will need to be on YouTube eventually. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: It will be. ↩ Reply

Ivan: What? But you don't want to. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: I will not put it up there myself. But I will provide a license for it. Though I'm skeptical of it being there for long. ↩ Reply

Ivan: What? Why? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Because of the nature of the film? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Exactly. ↩ Reply

Ivan: I don't understand. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Our film is more Tor material and less YouTube material. It starts with a masturbating little girl. ↩ Reply

Ivan: We are not showing it. We are only implying it. It's not supposed to be illegal. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Do you think YouTube cares if it's legal or not? They care only if it's making people feel bad. This is by the way why people are scared of Tor. Tor, by it's nature created a place where it's very easy to stumble upon something that makes you feel bad. And this is why I think we have to have a hard bootstrapping process. Our movie is too uncomfortable for YouTube. You cannot post it on other big platforms either. Porn-Hub could have cared less. But the main characters are children. Therefor they will ban the thing outright. So we have to do it on our own. Using our resources. Maybe with a slight assistance from Tor. Those who visit it regularly will not have any uncomfortable feelings from the movie. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: We talked about it, Sheiny. Controversy in film is good. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Dead-pool! ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Yes... I know. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Dead-pool's trailers are not banned from YouTube. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Because it's a major Marvel character. He is too famous already. And people know him to be slightly uncomfortable. It's not the same feeling as with an unknown film. More than that, Dead-pool is a comedy. It makes it easier to swallow some ideas. While Sinking In The Fire is more of drama. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Sinking In The Fire is a masala film. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: It doesn't have singing numbers. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: But it pretty much has all of the other things. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: It's not famous. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Well, that's good. Since they probably will not notice it to ban it. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We want the snowball to roll passed them noticing it. ↩ Reply

Ivan: And the problem is? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: If we set it up so people will gravitate toward the YouTube publication. In other words, if we make the YouTube link for it - the official link, we risk with YouTube shutting us down. So instead the official link should in a place where we control it. With Tor we control it. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: But with Tor nobody wants to see it. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We will make our own website and everything... ↩ Reply

Ivan: On Tor? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Yes, through Tor. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Why not .com or something? So it would work in a normal browser... ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Tor gives us more control. Normal sites are much easier to ban. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Do both! ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Then, people will gravitate toward the .com site. And it will become the official link. So if we will be banned, we will have to start rolling our ball from scratch. But if the official link is the Tor link. Then the ball will roll there to begin with. And it's not that big of a problem. But we can do a .com promo site. Explaining how to reach the main site. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: People are less likely to go to Tor just because it gives the publishers more control. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Yes! People do not want, by mistake, to see something they do not want to see. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Freedom of Speech is to tell you what you don't want to hear. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Yes, but we are trying to sell the product. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: This product has a message. This product is my speech. And this message is probably not something that people want to hear. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: You are impossible. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: You are scared that we will grow too slowly? ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: I'm scared that we will not grow at all. ↩ Reply

Ivan: Sheiny, even if you do an explanation site. People are too lazy to install programs to reach websites. Sometimes they are too lazy to leave YouTube. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Those same lazy people, when watching a new Marvel trailer, still pick up their butts and go to the cinema. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: You are comparing trash to gold. ↩ Reply

Sheiny: They just have a bigger ball. We need to start rolling. ↩ Reply

Ivan: And for how long will we roll? With such growth it will take... ↩ Reply

Sheiny: It's exponential! ↩ Reply

Ivan: What do you mean? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: Banal example, but I think you never thought it before. Say we have 8 by 8 chess board. And we will start putting rice on it. On the first cell we put 1 grain. On the second 2 grains. And so on. Doubling the amount each time. How much there will be in the end? ↩ Reply

Ivan: With such a slow growth? I think 100 grains or so... Right? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: No! We have 8 by 8. It means 64 cells. Right? First sell 1 grain. Second 2, third 4, then 8, 16, 32, 64, 128... You see I already got 128 and I'm only on cell number 8. If we keep going, by the end it will be eighteen quintillion, four hundred forty-six quadrillion, seven hundred forty-four trillion, seventy-three billion, seven hundred and nine million, five hundred fifty-one thousand, six hundred and fifteen grains of rice, over 1.4 trillion metric tons of the stuff. ↩ Reply

Ivan and Mr. Humbert both stood there mind-blown. Ivan at the largeness of the number. Mr. Humbert was a bit smarter and he remembered this example from somewhere. So he knew that the number should have been huge. He was mind-blown that Sheiny could remember the damn thing. ↩ Reply

Mr. Humbert: Ah... So what do we need to do? ↩ Reply

Sheiny: We need to stop being afraid to do the right thing. I will open a website, through Tor, and we will publish first our trailer there and subsequently the movie itself. And we will only need a few people there to start the rolling. After which we will be able to sit back and enjoy how we grow without doing a single thing. ↩ Reply

Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply


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