Technology

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.

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.

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

I'm all for it, America needs to be reminded of what capitalism actually is.

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'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

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

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?

Cool. If they allow views while using ad-blockers I’m in.

Google is such a bully, I want china to succeed.

Unless I can make A whole channel dedicated to 1989 Massacre Im not interested.

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?

Good.

Americans are left with such a terrible, enshittified digital information economy that we must entertain even our enemies for alternatives.

As soon as I saw this news, I signed up there in order to see how it is like. I'm yet to find non-Chinese-language content, as I don't really know Chinese. I mean, I do know from memory some very specific Chinese ideographs (given my special interests) such as maotouying (猫头鹰 lit. "Cat-headed eagle", which is one of the words for "owl", aside from xiao 鴞) which was, unsurprisingly, my first search in Bilibili. (I also know words and ideographs such as hong 红 red, ni hao 你好 greetings, ren 人 person/people, among others that wouldn't suffice for me to, say, buy 500g of bread in a bakery during some trip to China, lol)

The platform quite of reminds me of xiaohongshu (Red note), including the same emoji pack.

Then I tried to search for words with Latin alphabet (e.g. "Ereshkigal" and "Pomba-gira") and the results were nothing directly related to my search query, with Bilibili returning me a list of recommended videos based on my watch history (owl videos) instead.

One thing I liked is the lack of notifications (TikTok used to push notifications a lot) and the (momentary) lack of advertisements, maybe because there aren't companies from my geographic region (Brazil) buying ad placement there yet.

As a Brazilian, I'm sincerely wishing to see more Chinese and nonwestern alternatives to things, including but not limited to video platforms. I've been boycotting YouTube for two years and counting, for example, and it would be interesting to see a Chinese alternative to it other than the westernized TikTok (which is nowhere near to Chinese-only Douyin and its likely better/educational content). And, of course, I'm also rooting for PeerTube to gain traction, because it's native to Fediverse.

!technology@lemmy.world

Oh boy coyote urine over coyote urine my fave.

They're going to need to drastically change how the platform looks if they want to succeed. In typical Chinese app fashion the UI is incredibly bloated and overwhelming, not what a Western audience wants at all. They also won't be able to match YouTube's CPM so creators won't bother switching either.

I think we should be looking for decentralised alternatives not something prone to enshittification.

Cool, I'm gonna upload Tienanmen massacre documentary as a first thing.

If they actually have age divided portions of their platform, where adults are free to make adult content such as history, reviews of hentai, and so forth, I am all for it. Youtube sucks because it doesn't treat the audience or creators as adults, and often changes the rules at the drop of a hat.

Personally, I am guessing it will fall to Peertube and other fediverse platforms to offer genuine freedom for people, but I wouldn't complain if Bili breaks the camel's back known as Youtube.

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.

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.