I do enjoy listening to Lunduke go on about things in the Linux world that actually give me a stomach ache, but I keep at it. Hey, it led me here!
But… he’s gone and added a paywall to his YouTube content. Not much, $5/mt. I could handle it. And it’s perfectly in his right to do it. He’s keeping all of the audio broadcasts free, for now.
But, OMG! All of the negative comments on his channel. Seems like he did this once before and it didn’t work out. I like the guy but I think this is a mistake that will set him back a bit.
In my mind he should do a few adverts. Surely there must be something he could push for the coin.
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Yeah, I saw quite a lot of negative comments on the announcement video. It sounds like he isn’t too worried about his reach on YouTube (he commented about it on The Forum) (Lunduke’s forum). From the looks of it (and a topic made on The Forum), the podcast is open for non-subscribers (as found in this example); it is only videos that seem to require payment. I don’t see much of a reason not to post the podcasts to YouTube. Perhaps I’ll ask on The Forum.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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He probably shouldn’t have bailed on Odysee over something that set it apart from YT. As a result, he landed at Locals/Rumble. Odysee is/was an open source platform on the LBRY protocol. Something that could give his content permanence. Instead, he went with a proprietary solution. It seems he is not very logically consistent when it comes to his views on YT and the decline of FOSS, and his inability to be on FOSS platforms.
Honestly, it’s probably just about money and Locals/Rumble doesn’t make him enough of it. I don’t know how much more he thinks he’s going to make from YT when they continue to push him down in the ranking despite being a premium creator.
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I prefer seeing more subscription model and less advertisments model. I’d rather see none of the latter, frankly. I think the default notion that content should be “gratis” is perhaps the main reason the Internet is such an ungodly sack of crap — when it is. But, more importantly, if you didn’t make the stuff, you have no right to it: it is not yours.
I wouldn’t put much stock in the screams of youtube commentators, btw; who knows they’re not antifa types just yelling, but even if they’re not, they are simply upset they’re no longer getting something they’ve no right to for free. It might be I’m so old, but that makes me wish for to; but barf and perish.
Lunduke’s recent “video” offerings were audio only, with just an image instead of his old newscast style. I think that in the end, his decision will decrease his reach, but I hope for him that it increases his revenue.
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It doesn’t bother me, but if he’s having money issues, why can’t he get non-tech sponsors like Dailywire, GoodRanchers or TrueClassic?
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For anyone wondering, he replied to this on The Forum and said that he has been approached by a variety of Conservative-friendly companies, but he wants to stay independent to avoid any influence on his work.
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I hope he is successful. Maybe a time will come when there will be truth in speech, information, and media again. Then society will prosper.
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Personally, the idea of ads just puts me off. I hate when creators boost ads in their videos. If you need money, give me the $5 sub to go ad-free, I don’t mind that at all. IMHO it would be the biggest mistake if Lunduke did advertising. Just let us do subscriptions instead. $5 is cheaper then the newspaper anyways and he provides top tier tech news. Those complaining about him going subscription-based are just OSI nuts that think no-one should have money for anything.
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Disparaging people who like free content as freeloaders or nuts.
Now I’ve heard everything.
I trust they have all made donations to OML, and subscribe to YouTube Premium, etc. 
how about this?:
People who complain about ads or sponsorships are just too ignorant or too lazy to look up and implement ways to avoid them.
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Looks like Lunduke is still posting free videos, just not as many.
https://rumble.com/v6xn1oe-lundukes-week-in-tech-august-15th-2025.html
I guess I can continue in my nutty freeloading ways.
I listen to his content through Fountain, so nothing has really changed for me.
I’m politics-first and although he shares a lot of useful information, I’m reasonably certain he is a Sayan (working as a volunteer for Mossad.) He makes a concerted effort to excel in tech journalism so that he can be used to promote or attack particular narratives. But I found out about OMLX from his channel so I feel like I came out ahead. It was very helpful to know how insanely left-leaning the rest of the Linux / Gnu world really is.
Just about every content creator monetizing the false dichotomy is guilt of this, though. The problem with politics is it only serves bureaucrats, oligarchs, and politicians. People need to get back to civics, instead. This all comes from people shirking their responsibilities to knowledge, wisdom, and awareness. They have no problem subsidizing their civic responsibilities to an indifferent third party, then lose their minds when that third party sells them out.
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If voting was going to work it would have been made illegal a long time ago. I’ve begrudgingly become a fascist for the same reason I grew up libertarian… it’s the only corrective measure we have any time left for. I felt a little embarassed when you interpreted “politics” to mean that phoney circus of psychopaths, I can’t understand how any honest person under 40 could be invested in that system.
There is a lot we agree on. I don’t think collectivism and big government is an answer. It just robs people of their rights and consent. Government will never investigate itself and find wrongdoing. As a society, we definitely don’t need private and public sector forming an unholy alliance (fascism). For the reasons I just gave about collectivism and big government.
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My take is that collectivism in and of itself isn’t the problem. It is involuntary collectivism that is the problem. People can voluntarily form collectives till the cows come home, but when people are forced/coerced to conform to a given collective’s whims, that’s when there is a problem. Fascism is very very coercive form of collectivism, as is communism. Fascism’s only advantage over communism is, IMHO, that it is more economically viable than communism.
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Do you realize that fascism calls for the government to pick winners and losers, just as with socialism and communism? Fascism is the opposite of libertarianism, which says the best government is little government with minimal regulations. With libertarianism, let the viable businesses battle it out in the free market for survival.
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That’s what I love about OpenMandriva, I can make an honest introduction and people who disagree aren’t trying to kill me.
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That’s what I love about it, too!
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