4 Employees, 12 Million Visitors, Zero Moderation

Odysee.com receives 12.64 million visits per month. It hosts content flagged for terrorism, hate speech, extremism, and conspiracy promotion. And according to Crunchbase, it has four employees.

The Skeleton Crew

According to publicly available corporate data, Odysee lists just four staff members: CEO Julian Chandra, CTO Alex Grintsvayg, founder Jeremy Kauffman, and Founding Partner Joshua Finer. That is the entire team responsible for a platform serving millions of visitors across multiple continents and languages.

For context: YouTube employs over 10,000 people, including thousands of dedicated content moderators. Even Rumble, the much-smaller competitor with 46 million monthly visits, reportedly has 200+ staff. Odysee has 3.15 million visitors per employee.

The Las Vegas Address

Odysee is registered in Las Vegas, Nevada — a popular state for business incorporation due to its minimal reporting requirements, no state income tax, and strong corporate privacy protections. Nevada does not require companies to disclose their officers or shareholders publicly. This makes it effectively impossible for regulators or researchers to understand who is actually making decisions at the company.

Born from Bankruptcy

Odysee was originally a subsidiary of LBRY Inc., which was founded in 2015 by Jeremy Kauffman. In March 2021, the SEC sued LBRY for selling unregistered securities ($11 million in LBC tokens). LBRY lost the case in November 2022, initially facing a $22 million fine — later reduced to just $111,614 because the company was insolvent.

By October 2023, LBRY was placed in receivership. All executives, employees, and board members resigned. The company that built Odysee ceased to exist.

In June 2024, Forward Research — the venture studio behind the Arweave blockchain — acquired Odysee from receivership. The acquisition terms were not disclosed. Forward Research CEO Sam Williams dismissed the SPLC's documentation of 165 extremist channels by saying "a healthy democracy requires free speech."

No Moderation Infrastructure

With 4 employees, Odysee has:

• No dedicated content moderation team
• No automated content detection systems (not a GIFCT member)
• No published transparency reports — ever
• No compliance with the EU Digital Services Act
• No participation in the Christchurch Call to Action
• No adoption of the Santa Clara Principles
• No known response SLA for user reports

Our automated scanner flagged 4,711 items that violate Odysee's own Community Guidelines. The removal rate is 0%. Every single flagged item remains live and monetized.

The Implication

This is not a startup struggling with scale. Odysee has been operating since 2020 — six years. It has been the subject of 23 independent investigations. The SPLC documented $336,000 flowing to extremist channels. Reuters, The Guardian, and GBH News have all reported on the problem. The platform's own VP leaked an email saying "just being a nazi isn't grounds for removal."

Four employees is not an accident of underfunding. It is a deliberate choice to avoid the cost and accountability that comes with content moderation. When you have 4 staff and 12.6 million visitors, moderation isn't difficult — it's impossible. And that's the point.