Experiencing Technical Difficulties as a Video Platform

This is a companion piece to Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: Financial Trouble? describing some of the technical challenges experienced using the Rokfin video streaming platform. There is a second companion piece detailing the crypto-specific issues with the platform, which you can find here.

The past several years, we’ve seen YouTube, the dominant video platform, censor and demonetize creators who are critical of the US Government’s policies on COVID, January 6, Election Integrity, Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and a host of other topics. That sent those censored & demonetized creators looking for alternative places to livestream and build an audience.

One of the safe havens that’s served as an ad-free home for the censored and controversial has been Rokfin, a video platform built to cater specifically to a couple of niches (amateur wrestling and the censored, “free thinkers”).

Initially in 2020, it was

, , and several others that introduced me to watching livestreams and uploaded videos on Rokfin as a YouTube alternative. Being ad-free and the lack of censorship about the topics listed above was the best part, for me, as well as the community of chatters. The platform grew substantially as they added more creators in 2021. Jimmy Dore and Whitney Webb were the two that I was most excited about joining. They then added more comedian/podcasters Eddie Bravo, Sam Tripoli and others.

When I started a livestreaming How Did We Miss That, it was a goal to get approved for a Rokfin account, which I was really proud to achieve in March 2022. Over the next few months, I empowered other streamers who didn’t have a channel yet, to simulcast their show live to that Rokfin channel, to give them exposure on the platform. More than half a dozen of those creators now have their own Rokfin channels.

, INN of course, was one of those referrals, and was approved for a channel in June 2022. The network had been using it as our primary channel on Rokfin ever since.

I was always unsure of the crypto element (tokenizing videos? ok), but I wasn’t looking too closely at that early on. I thought the idea could possibly have merit, believed in what the company was doing with the platform as an ad-free alternative to YouTube. I saw the RAE (Receive Access Ecosystem) token as a VERY SMALL investment potentially (if the token was truly limited), to put profits back into growing the channel. At one point in early 2022, I actually bought out all the RAE from one creator who didn’t want to deal with it. Man, am I regretting that for a variety of reasons. There is so much to break down on the crypto side, I’ve published a companion piece to just address the Crypto Challenges.

For more of a deep dive into the nightmare for a creator on Rokfin, listing the detailed steps to extracting actual cash from RAE tokens to deposit into a bank account, CLICK HERE

I have been an advocate for Rokfin but seem to be fighting a losing battle in finding & working to drive an audience there to compete with the viewer counts YouTube or even Rumble. These are just some of the tech problems that I’ve personally experienced, and I know firsthand of other creators and viewers who have complained about these regularly.

In mid-June 2024, we began receiving an error message whenever we streamed live from the INN account. It would seem like it was working on our side, but the viewer would see an error message that the video couldn’t be shown (see below), some of whom did not go to another platform to watch, unfortunately.

We reached out to support, I had a great call on June 26 with Matt, the VP, he was able to replicate the problem on his side and said the engineers would work on a fix. I also pointed out an error with the channel slider at the top, which he said he would also show engineering, but that might take longer to fix.

As of September 12, 2024 the channel is STILL unable to livestream. We’ve had minimal communication from Rokfin and have heard from nobody besides Matt. Luckily, we have the IndLeftNews channel as a backup, which we have been using for INN since the end of June. Our audience has contributed over USD$100 in Tips since then, mostly which would have gone to the other channel, and Rokfin has not paid out any of it since August 23.

Rokfin has always been challenging from a technological standpoint. For livestreamers, there are extra hoops to jump through in order to actually make a video “go live” that most video platforms don’t have.

A 3rd party software like OBS, Streamyard or Restream is required to record and send an RTMP signal to Rokfin. They don’t have a streaming studio.

While Rokfin at least provides a permanent RTMP key for the channel (meaning a unique key doesn’t have to be copy/pasted into your streaming software for each stream), in order for a stream to actually be live on the platform, it must first

• be set up using the creator dashboard, advising what the title, description & thumbnail of the video/stream will be.

• Then, once the signal is received via RTMP when OBS or Streamyard goes live, a red button must be clicked in the Rokfin creator panel to actually take the channel live.

The description box within Rokfin’s creator panel is limited to 1600 characters (other platforms are 4,000 or 5,000 characters). The panel has other weird idiosyncrasies that cost time to fix. Apostrophes, quotes, … (3 periods) and — (2 dashes) are all no-nos (even in titles!), so properly copy/pasting a description from a Google or Word Doc can take extra time to first identify the issues, then cleanse.

Another functionality that the platform everyone is competing with, YouTube, is far superior to Rokfin (and other competitors) is that they don’t offer a simple way for a non-programmer to receive and publish a feed of videos via RSS or MRSS, which can be imported into another tool or application, like a Telegram feed. This would give Rokfin creators more reach back to the platform, driving their followers & subscribers from, say, Telegram or Substack, to Rokfin. The only platform that has accomplished RSS video, to my knowledge, is Odysee, which gets even LESS traffic than Rokfin in the dissident independent media space.

One way that Rokfin COULD stand out would be to upgrade their video technology to the level that a simple copy/paste of the video link would embed the video in Content Platforms like Substack and WordPress

Rokfin has never integrated with web-based streaming platforms like Streamyard and Restream, as their competitors have, so creators can’t post a live Rokfin chat on screen within Streamyard/Restream easily, nor can they see or show when someone tipped the channel. Creators can ONLY see that through the Rokfin creator panel.

Rokfin’s iPhone and Android apps are buggy and do not integrate well with chat, the UX is one of the reasons people stay away. On mobile, to submit a chat, one must hit the “Enter” key on their keyboard, because clicking the Green button actually opens a donate window.

Viewers and fans can leave a “Tip” using a credit card during or after a livestream, which Rokfin then pays the creator in their proprietary crypto RAE token, after taking a 28% fee off the top, at the equivalent market value of RAE.

On desktop, it’s possible to scroll down the page to the point where the chat window on the right side of the screen disappears, which is clunky. See the 2nd screen shot below for an example.

Rokfin’s business model is different. A monthly premium user subscription of $14.99/mo (previously $9.99/mo) unlocks ALL the premium content on the platform – for ALL creators.

Premium content can only be viewed by premium subscribers of any channel on the platform. Each creator decides which, if any, content of theirs is paywalled as “premium.”

By default, each livestream and video uploaded is set as “premium” and the creator must manually change it to “free” when creating their title/description and uploading their thumbnail.

While non-paywalled content can be viewed by anyone, Rokfin has done a subpar job of communicating that publicly. For a long time, the platform required anyone who wanted to even view a video to register on the platform first! Thankfully, they changed that, but a lot of people got a bad first impression and vowed never to use it again.

In order to participate in chat or leave a comment, viewers must first register free with an email address and set up a profile.

The reduction of headcount, the lack of development on the tech side and their lack of communication & engagement with their creators in 2024 all indicate that there could be financial difficulties at Rokfin. The platform has been stable and working ok (for the most part) but no new development or fixes have been deployed in ages. I also noticed Rokfin has been buying Facebook & Instagram ads featuring their creators in vertical, TikTok-style videos (called Bites) to generate more traffic to the platform.

It would be interesting to learn the total in Tips + Monthly Subscription revenue for 2024 vs their expenses. Typically, when we see behavior like this, it is not the indication of a healthy, growing platform pushing to grow revenue & viewers.

In spite of these (and many more) challenges, a handful of creators have been loyal, saw the ad-free, censor-free vision – and stuck around. They appear to now be getting the short end of the stick from Rokfin.

There are even more bugs that I could go into, but these are enough to show that the platform is in need of a major tech upgrade in several key areas.

As a reminder:

Alternative video platform Rokfin has not paid out its creators in RAE tokens since the end of August, an alarming sign, to say the least. I have spoken with over a dozen creators, and none have indicated that they’ve been paid since August 23, which is the date I heard more than once as the last payment date.

Rokfin advised late on Sept. 12 that “the Mints & Tips haven’t been sent out yet, but they will be processed in the next few days. We’re currently in the process of streamlining this responsibility to ensure more efficient handling going forward.”

In spite of these (and many more) challenges, a handful of creators have been loyal, saw the ad-free, censor-free vision – and stuck around. They appear to now be getting the short end of the stick from Rokfin.

This is a companion piece to Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: Financial Trouble?

For more of a deep dive into the nightmare for a creator on Rokfin, listing the detailed steps to extracting actual cash from RAE tokens to deposit into a bank account, CLICK HERE

Active & Former Rokfin Creators on Substack: