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)
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.
Cool. If they allow views while using ad-blockers I’m in.
I think we should be looking for decentralised alternatives not something prone to enshittification.
Good.
Americans are left with such a terrible, enshittified digital information economy that we must entertain even our enemies for alternatives.
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
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
Competition is a good thing. YouTube needs competition, so they fear of losing users and creators and do something useful. Where other platforms exists as a niche alternative and don’t even have the power to rival YouTube, this one Bilibili at least has a chance.
Cool, I’m gonna upload Tienanmen massacre documentary as a first thing.
Try following it with something scathing about Trump.
Something something the one joke (about China)
They ran over children with tanks and it’s a crime to talk about it there.
Yes I will make fun of the Chinese government for not acknowledging their atrocities. Yes I also refuse to shut up about the US government putting Japanese-Americans in camps during WW2, or shooting college kids at Kent state, or putting Mexican kids in cages under the past 3 presidents. Don’t let governments hide the boot they want on our necks
Well more competition is good and we really need more alternative platforms. Can they make a browser as an alternative to chrome… Or push Firefox?
Honestly not sure why more people don’t use Firefox. It’s brilliant, especially with uBlock and Sponsorblock added.
Most people on their phones use the default browser, either Chrome or whatever Chromium-based the manufacturer includes. But otherwise it’s the browser included with the Facebook app.
2 reasons imo.
- Chrome inertia. Everyone who’s locked into it from the says it was legitimately faster.
- Every time it gets mentioned, it’s supporters like to “no true Scotsman” the original project and suggest their preferred fork instead.
lots of people don’t like the direction the company is heading
Fair point but are you seriously saying you prefer the direction Google is heading?
What direction is that? I haven’t been keeping up, I just use the browser.
I think being the only browser with a credible stance on ad blockers will help them in the long run.
There might not be a long run if google can dictate web development enough in the short term to essentially kill off all competition.
I use it and I install it on every family and work PC I can but the memory of the bloated Firefox that made so many originally switch to chrome is still there. I want apple to base their browser on Firefox to maybe get some traction back
yeah…ok…but no thanks…the idea is to use youtube less, not youtube++ more…but I guess a hosting alternative is good. Just not for anything even remotely critical of China.
and how many videos critical of China do you watch daily?
On purpose? Not much.
The bigger concern would be when a criticism of China would be an important facet of a topic that would be covered, and omitting that would detract from the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the content.
Imagine if video hosting platforms couldn’t call out any of the stuff Trump does as wrong or incompetent. So so many topics would have to be ignored entirely to avoid offending the administration. Currently China criticism is a little less critical in the moment by comparison, but things shift over time.
It’s gotta follow the local laws of where it’s hosted, so I doubt they’ll be allowed to have as strong censorship laws when they make a USA and EU version tbh
Well, they’ll be just as strong in the USA, but focuses on different topics
Private companies are allowed to decline to host at their will. USA nor EU mandate that a platform must host content they don’t want to.
In practice, it’s possible that China companies operating outside of China won’t implement the same restrictions that they do within China. Whatever the Chinese government thinks the importance of maintaining censorship within the borders, it seems probable that the government and companies will be more pragmatic about realities in other nations.
is it illegal to not host content critical of China in EU? otherwise local laws are irrelevant.
Corporate Censorship is generally illegal here, there’s still Censorship, but only via the gov
Niconico should do the same
We already have Odysee, Rumble & other platforms. They don’t even count for a tiny dent in the YouTube universe.
They don’t have a Chinese megacorp behind them though.
The timing couldn’t be better, considering that YouTube doubled the amount of views required to become a YouTube partner for new Creators. If you can get monetized on BiliBili aas well amd earn money with it like you can with YouTube, new Creators might indeed choose BiliBili over YT now.
The only people who care about these limits are spammers. The minimum gets you like 30$ a month - no one is making real content for 30$.
Now you can choose between a platform owned by the far-right and a platform owned by the far-left.
EDIT: Lemmy being Lemmy. Gonna say it again. FUUUUUCK COMMUNISM. FUCK IT ALL THE WAY UP ITS ASS. FUCK ALL COMMUNISTS. DEMOCRACY FOR THE FUCKING WIN. Move to China and see how much they actually love you. I’ll read your story in an article like this: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/american-family-moved-russia-seeking-better-life-got-drawn-war-ukraine-rcna220463
Every time one of you “Mamdani is right-wing” communist cunts downvotes me and presumably has their blood pressure spike to dangerous levels I reward myself with a cookie.
FUCK ALL COMMUNISTS. DEMOCRACY FOR THE FUCKING WIN.
Yeah, Pinochet was a real democracy lover, right?
What far-left? It’s an authoritarian-run capitalist state with better social safety nets than the US, doesn’t make it far-left.
better social safety nets
Given the horrifying dashcam footage (and found myself screaming wtf is wrong with these people?), that and the so-called social credit system doesn’t seem to keep some of their citizens on cars or trucks from plowing into other cars or people.
The social credit system thing was largely just US propaganda. It was tested it one city and abandoned. China has a credit score system just like most major economies, but from what I understand, the US system has far more restrictions on citizen’s actions based on the credit system than China does. Theirs only impacts lending, ours can impact housing and employment (though I think this practice is on the out and banned in many states).
Welp
There goes my bootleg international wrestling show full shows I used to watch there because copyrights will catch them atp
I used to watch all the newest air crash investigation videos on bilibili. It could be difficult to find, due to being in Chinese but once I found one, I could find them all.
[X] doubt
People in this thread having a normal one, predictably. Like even if (or especially if) you genuinely believe that China is the evil monster you were raised to believe, wouldn’t you be at least a little bit curious to get a window into their online culture? Don’t you want an opportunity for more interaction between Chinese and US/Western netizens?
As an American I’ve been using billibilli for a long long time as I consume a lot of Chinese media.
Billibilli is dog shit, the company is awful, the platform is cancer, and the entire thing makes YouTube and Google look like fucking saints.
Like holy fuck. I do not give one fucking flying piece of shit about china bad america good or any of that nonsense.
The fucking Chinese bullshit that people have to put up with on billibilli is outright nonsense. I just want to watch my fucking silly videos and dramas.
And all that said YouTube is ALSO dog shit with out any saving graces. It’s all fucking awful.
What I believe is in freedom of the internet. As in everyone should be able to access it and no one should be able to police what is on it. Complete free flow of information. Reddit should exist in the state that it does and lemmy should be there to counter balance it and no nation state should be able to say “no, we only allow one of these”. This doesn’t undermine any existing legal frameworks mind you. For example: distribution of underage pornography is still a crime almost everywhere and those who operate such sites are fair game for prosecution.
I get this may be too radical of an idea for some, but I truly believe education is the key to information literacy, not censorship.
This isn’t a new idea though, it was the “hacker” ethos of the 90s. Most nerds believed in that. But it was wrong because we do need to limit hate speech. Because racist speech is racist recruitment. And we do need to limit the influence of plutocrats and corporations on information.
I also believe neoliberalism is a failed and genocidal ideology that should similarly be banned like advocating for fascism.
Like the other commenter pointed out the other problem is the massive power imbalance. They have billions and they crush us. It doesn’t matter if something is right or wrong if billions are spend to hire the smartest sociopaths to craft an ad or PR campaign to emotionally manipulate the masses.
And the truth matters. We have a fundamental human right to reality. Constantly amplifying bullshit for revenue makes the actual flow of important information and ideas impossible.
This just means rich individuals decide what people see instead of states. It doesn’t result in education.
No they don’t. If I don’t want to see what Reddit wants me to see, I just switch to Lemmy instead. Reddit cannot ban Lemmy. But if the state had censorship powers, they could ban Lemmy.
I think its the same problem with the press on TV and print form. Rich individuals can buy up all press outlets and control the narrative. Its hard (and restrictive) to broadcast on TV and print. On the internet, at least the freedom to publish and access information has a low barrier to entry. A rich individual may buy one lemmy instance, can they buy them all? Can they buy its successor? The lower barrier and less restrictive nature of the internet (or how it should be) is too fast moving for them to compete imo. All the states need to do is educate people on how to consume media correctly.
A rich individual may buy one lemmy instance, can they buy them all?
Yes, easily. Additionally, they can control the search engines which lead there or not, the commonly used platforms for code sharing so that development is more difficult, and so forth. They have an incredible advantage through economy of scale. The barrier to entry for putting any information on the internet may not be very high, but making it findable and accessible has a very high barrier, and relies on corporate-controlled platforms.
I think the better question is will they be able to buy them all. Buying implies the other party is willing to sell.
Its true that this information will be harder to access if not indexed properly, but word of mouth is a good backup for that. I didn’t find lemmy from google, someone (non corporate entity) posted a link to it somewhere. Now, that ‘somewhere’ may be corporate controlled and ban certain links but I’d argue that will just split the internet into two (a corporate side and “free” side) with little cooperation between them and I don’t think anyone will be able to keep people from either side - as long as the internet remains neutral.
I think its just too hard to completely control information unless you are a nation state (and even then).
On the one hand, Chinese companies get an unfair advantage domestically. On the other, I would love to see Google sweat.
Literally every company is given a domestic advantage in their home country? Subsidies and visibility etc in home turf is not a new concept China has invented for their products.
What is an unfair advantage?
Hell ignore that, Google helps to write us trade policies. Do people really think there’s an open free market system in America or Europe for that matter? Look at Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Peasants were kept out but all the tech bro CEOs were there. Y’all are dreaming if you think that things are fair right now. Especially if you don’t think it’s a two-way street.
Being blocked is one I think
I just dislike the traditional framing of things like “unfair” in contexts like this. It’s always been used by dominant powers to destroy any domestic capacity. In this example, if China had never put up any barriers to foreign tech, they would have none of their own at all by now.
You can already get a VPN for ingoing traffic to China and “experience” it.
It’s not for us to decide that. CCP is literally holding Chinese hostage and even if this platform comes to the west the Chinese will never be allowed to mingle with us.
I think chinese internet is very interesting and wish China would be part of global internet one day but until autocrats change their mind it’s not happening.
You can literally just make an account on Xiaohongshu and chat with normal people in China.
I routinely swap recipes, talk about video games, new tech, swap cleaning tips, chat about restaurant recommendations and fashion. There’s a big cultural difference, sure, but Chinese people are, on the whole, incredibly friendly and hospitable and they’re curious about breaking down the myths they’ve heard about America and happy to break down the myths we’ve heard about China. We think they have a social credit system and they think a dishwasher can afford a huge “villa”. Though now that it’s opened up a bit they talk about a poverty “kill line” where if you fall below a certain income you are pretty much doomed to die. Which is exaggerated, but has some basis in reality, like most of these myths.
The one thing I think is a huge barrier is that they can’t understand why we drink cold water, even in the winter. So many conversations I’ve had have been about drinking cold water and asking “don’t you get dampness???” Honey, I’ve either never had dampess or I’ve been damp my whole life so I don’t know.
Either way, they’re just, like, people. And thanks to the magic of the internet, you can just talk to those people.
Literally none of what you said is true. Chinese people regularly interact with people of other countries on the global internet. its Literally impossible not to run into Chinese netizens on any major social media site.
