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)
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.
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?
Welp
There goes my bootleg international wrestling show full shows I used to watch there because copyrights will catch them atp
[X] doubt
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Isn’t the dystopian social credit system in China just an exaggerated propaganda? I thought its a similar system to the US credit scores.
Congratulations, you paid off your credit card debt. As a result your credit score just dropped, good luck on getting that mortgage approved.
fortunately, posting that Donald Trump is a pedophile rapist online doesn’t tank your credit score.
try speaking out about China online and see what happens.
personally, I’ve been harassed enough to know I should never visit China.
Europe exists with neither of these problems. You can get a credit card if you want but loads of people don’t. From a low effort search it actually looks like most people in almost all European countries don’t have one. Few exceptions like Norway but even there you have a very significant minority without one.
UK here and I bought a house without ever having a credit card or worrying or knowing what a credit rating is.
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?
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 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).
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.
You can already get a VPN for ingoing traffic to China and “experience” it.
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.
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.
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.
It’ll just be one more source to add to my GrayJay client at the end of the day lol
How well does GrayJay work? Freetube used to work amazing but it’s a tug of war now with google which frequently bans my IP. And it’s yt only.
I found this article actually explaining how to bypass this for yt-dlp. But I wonder how far we’ll come to have this in a multi source app.
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.
Thanks for explaining your experience, I’ll check it out once in a while to see what they have to offer.
I trust this as much as I trust big American tech platforms.
Considering how much damage Google et al do, I legitimately wonder whether China could even do worse, and I’m not even a tankie.
Don’t fall for the proximity bias, china is decades ahead on surveillance and stepping on personal rights. They act as a hive. They care more for what they believe that are they nationals and may look harmless to us non-chinese… but i do fear them.
In any case, I dont see them pressing a button to launch swarms of AI commanded drones to kill every person on a partially AI generated list that they probably already have in their hands, right now… i leave that dystopia to israel alone.
As far as I’m aware, google isn’t enacting a genocide… as far as I’m aware
Maybe not technically “enacting” but certainly supporting/furthering: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/google-reportedly-signs-45-million-contract-with-netanyahu-to-promote-israeli-messaging/ar-AA1LX8Lm
Sure, but Google’s just doing it because it’s profitable, not because they’re hell-bent on annihilating an ethnicity /s
Sure, if you remove the profit motive they wouldn’t provide resources.
Certainly not morally defensible… but also not outright evil either. Just absent any ethical compass.
That means your awareness needs to be expanded my friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus
This is a good (but non-exhaustive) list to look through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Gaza_war
Or my definition of enacting.
IBM supplied the computing machines for the Holocaust, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is giving cloud computing to ICE.
Not terribly interested in this video platform as I also don’t use YouTube. I really hope Google gets broken up and I don’t like them harvesting my data and selling it to the US Government any more than I like companies like Bytedance selling my data to the Chinese Government. I am in the US and think we should have established data privacy and data protection laws long before things got to the point they have gotten too.
China makes palantir look like freedom respecting software.
I don’t know why but “Google et al” made me laugh
Sure, but I’d rather have my info safely offshore in China than to give it right to big brother. I also bet far far fewer ads and more fun commercials because you have no idea what they are about. They are currently destoyjng the natural order in printer ink. I support that wholeheartedly. My Epson inks are 90 and the knockoffs are 20 and work just as well. It’s always temporarily beneficial when player 2 enters the market.
*Edit it does not like vpns. That’s a no for me.
Ah yes, instead of US big brother you give it to offshore Big Brother.
But China isn’t going to sell my data to Uncle Sam to help deport my family (who are legal citizens). So there’s that.
Why would you think that?
When you’re here, you’re family!
Big Boss
Weird, the few times I’ve used it I had no problem with my VPN.
the same as Tik Tok?
I’ve avoided that platform so yes if I’m understanding you correctly.
Political censorship is definitely worse so I‘m not going to bother.
This is one thing I noticed using Chinese social media. There are almost zero discussions of local politics. Foreign politics is fine though
You get nuked from orbit if you attempt to talk about local politics is why. Like hard.
There is no politics in Ba Sing Se.
Because YouTube doesn’t engage in anything like that ofc.
Are you seriously insinuating that the level of censorship on YouTube is anywhere close to Chinese platforms? A quick look on both websites would give you that answer very quickly.
Depending on the politic
I can’t wait for this to be announced as a threat to national security after creating mild competition for YouTube.
Maybe things change in the future, but right now I see VHS tapes at local thrift shops as being bigger competition to houtube than this.
Ye ‘ol Fail Army or whatever the fuck they call that stream of content now
Gamers Nexus started to print their videos on DVDs and Blurays recently
Y’know, free market
BRB, gonna upload something about Tianaamen Square.
Same old shit, different day. Can’t you find anything original? Post something negative about ICE on YouTube or something negative about Israel.
I got perma banned from reddit because of my comment that all the ICE traitors will never get their sign on bonus - which they haven’t - and after this is all over, they will have to go back to sucking immigrant cock behind the dollar store.
So don’t talk to me about propaganda and censorship. Western tech companies are just as bad if not worse. Especially Twitter or X or Y or whatever that shit is called, doesn’t know the first thing about free speech. Not that surprising if the owner does a Hitler salute.
Edit: one last thing. How much better is the American TikTok after it was taken over by another right wing company? Yeah, I thought so.
They will just remove it
site not found
Right. Because what people are just clamoring for is MORE draconian over sight on their public video platform.🙄
The thing is i dont give a shit if china tracks my web usage. What are they gonna do? Arrest me if I ever go there? But here in the US the US govt literally will come to your house and arrest you, that’s the actual threat to me.
Billig billig
Hey, I welcome any serious competition. Youtube has devolved into a much more censored platform than what we used to make fun of the Chinese for. “Unalive”, “grape”, and several topics that are demonetized on sight.
I found clip.place , a peertube instance really good alternative to YouTube. I am sure there are others.
Thing is peertube is still pretty much new and empty. I didn’t find much content that I would be interested in or even an interesting community. Although I see its potential as a social platform I don’t think it will ever replace YouTube (at least for me) as it wouldn’t give creators the financial incentive to use it.
The financial incentive is a big part of what ruined YouTube in the first place, so the lack of it is a W in my book. If a creator really is that good, I’ll support them directly.
I wouldn’t say 8 years is new
YouTube barely gives a financial incentive for most creators, that’s why most of them take sponsorship deals and/or use Patreon.
YouTube payout for creators is %55 of ad revenue generated per video.
PeerTube payout for creators is the ability to add a donation button on your page.
You ain’t got to lie Craig.
chat do yall think this is good or bad
Depends on if they require sign in or not.
at least it won’t require passport for signing up anymore lol
The popular Chinese alternative to YouTube, Bilibili, with around 376 million monthly active users, has confirmed plans to expand more aggressively outside China. The company has relaunched its international app for Android and iOS, and removed the previous requirement for overseas users to provide identity documents such as a passport.
I knew if I scrolled enough I’d find a good take
If so, Proton aliases FTW!
Last I checked using a browser they didn’t, could be changing though.
I’d rather not use these services than switch to a Chinese state service. I don’t need to learn the unique ways this is equally as bad as YouTube. ID verification does not have to overt or direct, to exist, given enough data to correlate.
Then again the CCP has absolutely no jurisdiction over you.
