How to find livestreams from strangers

December 22, 2018 8:38 AM

Facebook live is globally popular. I have fed voraciously off the global map (formerly facebook.com/live) which allowed me to drop into livestreams in random countries, attend random festivals, and learn about the world. Now they have pulled that interface and replaced it with some nonsense called watch. Is there any way to get back to watching livestreams from Dominican Republic, Peru, Nepal, Ghana, Brazil, the whole world? My interest in mainly those streams with few or no viewers, made on mobile phones, by people I couldn't possibly know.
posted by stonepharisee to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Well that sucks! I had it bookmarked and was just browsing it earlier this week.

It's not available on desktop, but the mobile app version of Periscope has a very similar interface for its live streams, and it has roughly the same level of global popularity. (Hopefully it has fewer QVC-style channels than FB did).
posted by Rhaomi at 11:45 AM on December 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Also, if you really want the same experience on desktop, you can use an Android emulator to get a copy of the app working on your PC or Mac.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:47 AM on December 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

One more option: an unofficial YouTube live map. You have to click around to get videos instead of seeing dots on the map, but it works pretty much the same beyond that.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:00 PM on December 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you both very much. The YT map is great, but not live. Dead good to know though. The periscope/android thing works! A far cry from the numbers of fb-live, but valuable nonetheless. We can't be the only ones who found the previous service valuable.
posted by stonepharisee at 12:24 PM on December 22, 2018

I too loved to just watch random Albanian kids hanging out :(
posted by Iteki at 3:28 PM on December 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh no, how come lately I'm only hearing about things once they've gone extinct!? This sounds intriguing to me too.
posted by elgee at 9:08 PM on December 22, 2018