My Thoughts on DLive
Let me just preface this: I usually don't like making posts like this as companies are allowed to do what they want even if people don't agree and I hate bringing up drama. However this situation is something I really feel the need to talk about since I've used DLive before and am really upset by the situation.
After seeing @heimindanger's (owner of DTube) detailed post about the situation, I wanted to make my own.
In case you missed it, DLive announced a few days ago they were switching their website from Steem to a blockchain called Lino. As noted above in my humble opinion, it's perfectly valid for them to switch platforms as a business decision. What I don't agree with is the fact that it was planned from the beginning and they took advantage of Steem users.
As other's have posted, multiple DLive official streams showed the code being hosted in a sub-folder for Lino and some URLs pointing to Lino's website. They clearly always intended (or at least very early on) the site to be on Lino instead of Steem. They blatantly lied to users to get a delegation and users from Steem to boost their own blockchain which is a big no-no in my book.
The other big issue I have with the transition is that Lino doesn't support payments for upvotes (like I mentioned in my comment on their announcement) which is one of the biggest reasons why many people use sites like DTube, DSound, and DLive. Unless you are a super famous personality, you very likely don't get paid for your work from tips, especially if a lot of your viewers are broke and don't have the money to give even if they want to. The big benefit of these sites are that you can get an income from your viewers even if they personally can't afford it and with many using Ad Blockers or issues like YouTube's "Adpocalypse", you can't rely on ad income either. So removing that is one thing that would hurt many creators on your platform.
Another point is the fact of centralization. Personally for me, I love decentralized but I understand there currently is issues with it sometimes. That's why I originally switched from DTube to DLive, because my videos would constantly not work cause IPFS expired and somehow the hash changed even on the exact file so it couldn't be fixed without a re-upload (spamming the Steem blockchain in the progress). So them being centralized wasn't a big issue for me but decentralized would've been nice.
Ultimately, I think DLive shouldn't have abused Steem to build their own blockchain. If it was just them switching to Lino cause they thought Steem wasn't good enough, then fine but the fact they planned to use Lino from the start and used Steem funding and users as a "beta" is just really bad business.
For my own personal videos, I'm not gonna be using DLive of course but I'm also not gonna be using DTube for the time being either. I agree with heimindanger's mentality and the site is slowly getting better so maybe one day I can switch but currently it's just not suitable for my needs personally. I wish the DTube team good luck on their endeavors, in fact I added DTube as a Beneficiary to this post in hopes that maybe some funds could help them improve even more. (DSound is added also for similar reasons, it's a great site but not there just yet to replace SoundCloud cause the same issues)
For now, YouTube is sadly still the only valid option for videos. Hosting yourself doesn't work if you aren't a giant creator, Dailymotion sucks, Vimeo is only for high production short films, Vid.me was great but shut down cause lack of funds, and almost every other alternative has similar issues like DTube (videos won't stay up due to lack of viewers keeping up the decentralization, lack of features, no apps to view it on TVs or mobile devices, etc.).