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 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.)
(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.
YouTube badly needs a competitor imo
Kinda hope it succeeds
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.
Assuredly this won’t become the new “Tiktok ban” in the US.
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.
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.
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?
Bilibibi is just as big as Youtube. There’s almost no difference between them, except that one is the Chinese version and the other isn’t.
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
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
I’ve asked multiple Chinese colleagues who have lived in China for most of their lives and they all openly discussed it with me.
This Reddit tier hoax needs to die.
They very explicitly didn’t run over anyone with tanks. No one but Adrian Zenz has ever claimed that and you will not find a source that is not Adrian Zenz suggesting that they did.
What about this guy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Zheng
I’m pretty sure multiple eyewitness accounts corroborate the use of armored vehicles, tanks or APCs, running people over?
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.
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
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.
