How to find live streams

Finding new streams is one of the biggest challenges we face during broadcasts. Streams constantly go up and down during times of high activity. Below is a set of tips to find live streams quickly.

Searching

The most effective way to find a "good enough" set of streams is to simply leverage social media search features. Each social media platform differs slightly in its search functionality.

Facebook

Facebook accounts for the majority of live videos we've found - at least for the 2020 Seattle Protests. To find new feeds, follow this process:

1. Log into Facebook

2. Search broadly. For example, simply searching for the term "seattle" will return a decent number of results.

   • Facebook also supports advanced searching. This reduces the need to make multiple searches and allows you to simply refresh the page rather than searching all over again.
     For example, during a simultaneous march at the MOHAI and demonstration at SPD's West Precinct, the following search proved useful:
     (seattle OR chop OR chaz OR mohai OR denny OR slu OR lgbt OR lgbtq OR blm OR "black lives matter" OR community OR "i-5" OR precinct OR slu)

3. After searching, use the following search filters:

   • Videos

     • Sort By -> Most Recent

     • Date Posted -> Today (note: you may want to change to This Week if it's shortly after midnight and you want to find feeds from earlier in the evening)

     • Live -> Toggled ON

To refresh your results, refresh the page. If you accidentally search again, you will need to reset your search filters.

YouTube

1. Search broadly. For example, simply searching for the term "seattle" will return a decent number of results.

   • YouTube also supports advanced searching. For example:
     (seattle OR chop OR chaz OR mohai OR denny OR slu OR lgbt OR lgbtq OR blm OR "black lives matter" OR community OR "i-5" OR precinct OR slu)

2. After searching, use the following search filters:

   • Filter ->

     • Features -> Live

     • Sort by -> Upload date

To refresh your results, refresh the page. If you accidentally search again, you will need to reset your search filters.

Periscope.tv

Periscope does not appear to support advanced searching, but it automatically sorts by most recent. Multiple searches are required to search Periscope directly.

When someone goes live from Twitter, it also gets posted to Periscope and Tweets a link. Sometimes, these links can be found by searching Twitter and looking for links to Periscope pages, such as the following example:

("pscp.tv" OR "periscope.tv") AND (seattle OR chop OR chaz OR mohai OR denny OR slu OR lgbt OR lgbtq OR blm OR "black lives matter" OR community OR "i-5" OR precinct OR slu)

Instagram

Instagram is tough - we're not aware of any way to search for live streamers. The only way to find out about Instagram streams is to follow known streamers on Instagram or bookmark their pages.

Happs.tv

The search functionality is weak here, but you can still find streamers by keywords. It's a bit manual.

Bookmarks

As you find streamers, it can be helpful to keep a separate bookmarks folder. Many browsers support the ability to open all bookmarks within a folder in separate tabs inside a new window. Note that these bookmarks folders can get extremely large and trying to open all of the tabs can introduce serious performance impacts as pages load.

Crowd Sourcing

If you're streaming, regularly ask your viewers if they're aware of any other streamers. This can be especially useful for finding Instagram feeds.