The China-centric video sharing platform is expanding with a new international app and an English version of its website – with no identity verification (for now at least)
YouTube’s censorship has become worse than cable TV’s (in the US). I have a feeling that BiliBili will only further normalize the aggressive censorship, like TikTok did.
thats good news youtube was mainstream so looong that it becomes to eat itself slowly seeing some competitions maybe lead the long form video market better
Okay peertube, now’s your time to shine! Become the default for the Fediverse by stepping in during this power struggle
Happy for the competition, sad that it came from a place that will probably censor things even harder.
Given how China just took all the money away from and sent to prison the CEO of evergrande, I’m starting to trust their apps more than american ones.
The only reason that happened was because that CEO’s decisions lead to massive negative results in China’s real-estate sectors, which in turn cost the Chinese government a lot of money, and THAT is why that criminal actually saw consequences.
Don’t take that as proof that China judges everyone fairly regardless of wealth/status. As long as you keep your crimes to an extent that it doesn’t cause a massive backlash on large swaths of the country, it’s a different ballgame.
As others have said, you’d be wise to distrust both.
As long as you keep your crimes to an extent that it doesn’t cause a massive backlash on large swaths of the country, it’s a different ballgame.
actually that does sound kinda reasonable. what is a crime, if not defined by its negative consequences for the rest of the population?
No one said you have to trust either.
Because the problems aren’t with the businesses like it is in the US.
They are with the government. Which can get much worse since there is no one to govern those.
And in China, the government is in every app. It is by law.
lol, same here
I trust (and distrust) both equally.
I’m all for it, America needs to be reminded of what capitalism actually is.
the way i imagine it:
- as long as it’s american companies running everything, it’s “fair” and “free market”.
- as long as some company from abroad manages to do things better and more efficient, and american companies come under pressure, we’ll suddenly erect trade barriers and market hurdles to “protect american values”, “for our national security” or sth else. i’ve seen this soo many times. people who “just follow the rules” as long as the rules benefit them. as soon as the same rules start biting them in their own ass, suddenly for some reason they say that we need to change the rules.
Knowing our govt, Google will lobby them to ban BiliBili so they can enjoy classic american protectionism. Can’t make it in a free market so just ban / tariff the competition to hell.
what would the equivalent action under communism be?
I’m all for letting America make itself irelevent.
I’ve heard of Billibilli. It’s great for pirated films and TV shows that you can’t get anywhere else.
I don’t really trust it to be much better at respecting privacy than YouTube, but at this point, I’d be surprised if it was any worse, and YouTube has been getting worse for lack of competition for over a decade now
I feel like we’re entering a world where you have competing surveillance states, and citizens from either would be behooved to use technology from the other. For the simple fact that these two states don’t cooperate, using the other sides technology is inherently safer. They have far fewer manners of or financial interests in fucking you.
Yeah. At this point as an American I’m way less worried about in the Chinese government tracking me than I am with the US government. The Chinese government is evil, but I don’t live in China.
Yes but never forget they aren’t above building profiles on people and selling them. The US government regularly buys these sort of data packages as a loophole to bypass constitutional protections against search and seizures.
Yep, this is why my security cameras are all from Chinese companies. Though I guess the NSA still owns the Wifi lol
I don’t really trust it to be much better at respecting privacy than YouTube
Why would you trust it to be any better at respecting privacy?
Basically, spying is one of YouTube’s most egregious problems, and one of the biggest reasons people like me want valid competition for it, and one of the biggest selling points of smaller competition like Peertube and Glomble. I don’t see Bilibili offering that, but just the competition itself might give YouTube the kick up the arse it needs to respect its users.
I’m kidding myself, at this point it feels like YouTube would keep abusing its userbase even if it wasn’t profitable, just for the sheer fun of it, but in an ideal world, this would solve a lot of problems.
That says they don’t trust it.
I’ve been using an account with a translator. They have some unique niche videos I can’t find anywhere else.
Any fun trends? Do things spill over between west and east?
I just downloaded it. No sign up necessary but it asks for a birthdate. (I just picked June 4 1989 randomly, ofc.)
It uses AI to translate from Chinese to your selected language. The image below shows available languages.
You don’t need to login to upvote videos. However, you not be able to comment or reply. Also, viewing comments is limited.
To create your account, you have to provide your phone number, which is an automatic “not happening” for me.
Once your phone number is “bound”, you can link your Google account for your login. This will make it easier for East-West cooperation in data mining and mass surveillance.
You can also use an email and password of your own choosing.
Overall, I can’t see me actually binding my phone number to make an account.
Anyway, here’s what my feed looked like when I opened the app and skipped account creation/login:
Some AI looking slop, of course.
Of the first dozen or so, only two seemed interesting - the Rick Roll meme history and a Brazilian explaining how to use “lá ele” in conversation. (I speak Brazilian Portuguese so this was actually very cool to see.)
Have you started uploading Tienenmen Square videos yet?
Gotta have an account for that. So no.
(I just picked June 4 1989 randomly, ofc.) 🤣
I mean. This is… Not worse than now, I guess?
Any entity that can take a chunk out of YouTube’s dominance is a good thing.
But I’m not going to celebrate another corp making a shamelessly monetized video site. They’re independent-ish now, yes, but for how long? It’s just a different flavor of attention gaming and enshittification in the long run.
And I’m skeptical they have the muscle to significantly displace YouTube’s iron grip on everything, even with Google tightening the screws.
Yes! We have peertube which is actually cool.
Unfortunately Peertube is going to be… very difficult to scale.
It needs more people to engage and more exposure.
It’s more that (as I understand it) the storage requirements increase exponentially relative to the number of users.
8 trackers from 6 different companies, hard pass.
Isn’t the usual amount hundreds?
they probably mean, 8 trackers loaded in the frontend. hundreds are still possible by selling backend collected data, they just don’t get direct access.
Yes, but none of them are Chinese.
At this point I’d prefer the Chinese government to track me over US companies. The Chinese government won’t let the US government access its databases, whereas Google will.
YouTube just has google firebase analytics
Cool. If they allow views while using ad-blockers I’m in.
I would prefer it if it wasn’t Chinese because I don’t really trust Chinese companies, but then again I didn’t really trust Google and YouTube super duper needs competition.
I don’t trust Chinese either, but I trust the US and the 5 eyes mob even less. Chinese for me is on the “not as bad as the US, UK and AUS” list. The reason being that I could not care less what the Chinese platforms gather on me with what little they can gather (which is not much due to how I use the internet as a whole), but the US, due to the relationship they have with me and with my country can actually do some damage.
I think we should be looking for decentralised alternatives not something prone to enshittification.
It’s a really hard problem to solve though. Video hosting is a huge data hog I don’t think small independent instances would be able to keep up with the storage requirements. Especially at the moment considering storages so expensive.
honestly i think it’d be nice to have a full p2p video directory instead. something like peertube but without instances, resembling a torrent tracker like nyaa, aimed generally for educational stuff, entertainment, music, etc. basically youtube but as a torrent tracker, to reduce the storage requirement. you’d be able to seed your favorite media and the fact that people would not want to waste their storage on seeding worthless stuff and the technical hurdle of p2p would keep the mindless slop out.
I think you just might be right, which is sad.
Good.
Americans are left with such a terrible, enshittified digital information economy that we must entertain even our enemies for alternatives.
Why is China your enemy?
I’ll be more specific. The PRC (government) is an enemy to humanity in my view.
Competition.
Good. Seriously - enough with YouTube’s vs censorship and making predators like Jake Paul and mr beast into millionaires
Edit: Ugh… checked on bilibili and noticed he also has a channel there. The guy is like a parasite to humanity
Bilibili isn’t going to be any better about censorship. It just has a slightly different list of forbidden topics.
Thank you for pointing out that shitnugget, its enough for me to know that i never will use bilis platform out of sheer principle
I mean if another competitor rises up, he’ll just create an account there too. You’re stuck with peertube pretty much
YouTube badly needs a competitor imo
Kinda hope it succeeds
