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Chinese video platform Bilibili is going global to challenge Youtube (www.engadget.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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)

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[–] 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 35 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    Most users don't care about any of the spying. I'd expect a competitor of similar size to do the same. If there's any improvement competition could bring, it would be for the creators, giving them a larger slice of the ad revenue that otherwise goes to the owners of the platform. I guess that would mean better quality videos for users. Though, I don't think allowing anyone to make boatloads of money by getting millions of people to sit around for hours and hours watching videos has been a positive for humanity. Incentivizing creators with more money will just make this worse.

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