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)

    • artifex@piefed.zipOP
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      3 months ago

      Considering how much damage Google et al do, I legitimately wonder whether China could even do worse, and I’m not even a tankie.

      • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • Imhotep@feddit.fr
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          3 months ago

          How do you do that? I would love to be able to avoid YouTube. I could go without the entertainment part of it, sure. But no more tutorials would already be a big pain. And then there are the news sites with embedded videos. Even the state uses it.

          YouTube has single handedly almost nullified my degoogling project

          • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            If I have a project, I often prefer to read up on how to accomplish the task, such as going to blog posts or getting to the source documentation. If that is not possible, I use yewtu.be (it can be slow to load just FYI). There is also PeerTube, but it doesn’t have as much content. Lastly, there is FreeTube, which is built on YouTubes API and gives them revenue in some way, but doesn’t have ads. It doesn’t allow Google to learn your behavior or target you for ads. I also use a VPN (with DNS protection enabled) when loading anything. If you’re degoogling (as I and many have done), one other item I hear people say they have difficulty dropping is Google Maps. I know you didn’t ask about it, but just to add, other options exist, such as Open Street Maps (OSM), Organic Maps, CoMaps, Magic Earth (I think may be built on Google Maps API, but not entirely sure), and Kagi (I’m fairly sure it uses Apple Maps and Google Maps API). Also, I have just started looking into FlockHopper, but I’m not sure what it is built on, I think OSM and MapBox (not sure if I have that right), but I’m not sure. Also MapQuest still exists.

            • Imhotep@feddit.fr
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              3 months ago

              Youtube is about the last Alphabet service I knowingly use (except when someone shares a google doc).
              I thought you meant no Youtube at all. I use Freetube and Newpipe almost exclusively.
              Peertube too, when the instance I use to follow channels works (the two previous ones closed). It’s a pain to subscribe to stuff. Maybe with RSS feeds…

              edit: I’ve been subscribed to Kagi for a while too, maybe going two years. Love it. Wish it was cheaper

              I really liked Qwant maps, a good use of OSM, but the idiots closed it…

              • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip
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                3 months ago

                I meant to say, not directly use their services for video and definitely aim to give them less identifiable information. Like Invidious’s Yewtu.be (https://yewtu.be/) scrapes YouTube and is not reliant on their API (but does give IP addresses to YouTube, hence the use of a VPN), but FreeTube uses YouTube’s API by default I think, but can use Invidious’s scrapping API (https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/privacy/). PeerTube is not reliant on YouTube at all and can be a good alternative even though it may have fewer videos (since you use that, then you’ve basically degoogled in that case). Maybe once a month or less I will watch a video from any of those services, so I don’t ever subscribe to any channels. I prefer to read documentation rather over watching videos when possible. To me that is in the spirit of degoogling. Same as I don’t avoid every website that has some script of Google under the hood. But I do block their trackers by activating “No Google” (https://github.com/nickspaargaren/no-google) from time to time if it doesn’t break a website (some website I need to access for work might not load if I have that on) and DuckDuckGo onionized on Tor mostly. I also need to use AlpaFold for work, but fortunately we have an instance that doesn’t go to Google’s servers. They created the protein folding technology and the instance and scripts had to be downloaded at some point from their servers. Degoogling is a fairly complex today. I have been reading more and more about digital cooperativism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative) and even though something may be open source, as expected, companies can still profit off of it. From the sounds of it, when it comes to cooperativism, no one person controls everything or profits. You may know more about this any how. All that said, giving people more digital privacy and protection is not a technological issue, but more of social issue. Hopefully people get more informed and interested in their digital rights in the future and society moves away from the likes of Google and Meta and Amazon and Apple (and OpenAI) at large.

      • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • plyth@feddit.org
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          3 months ago

          and stepping on personal rights.

          The racial make-up of the prison population suggests that the lead is not that big.

        • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe
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          The US has the largest prison population on the planet but China is the one stepping on people’s rights?

          I get that the CCP sucks ass but come on. As far as I’m concerned YouTube needs a serious competitor, it’s not like I’m moving to Shenzhen or something. YouTube is a complete and utter shithole.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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        3 months ago

        China makes palantir look like freedom respecting software.

      • Zorque@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        As far as I’m aware, google isn’t enacting a genocide… as far as I’m aware

      • Natanael@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        Yes they could, but it’s really a question of their incentives. They could easily use it to manipulate elections, etc. The biggest danger is probably to East Asia where China is trying to claim most of the ocean, using it to copy what US Republicans has been doing with Facebook and Twitter to support attacks on politicians opposing them. See also how Facebook ignored its role in the Myanmar genocide

    • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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.

        • 5318008@lemmy.ml
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          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.

            • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Who is more of a direct threat to US citizens ? At the moment I would say there’s way more chance ICE will come after you for posting or speaking out or protesting or hell just being you. I can’t remember the last time I worried about China selling me something because that’s what they will use the data for.

              • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                I’d say China is the greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty but that’s a discussion no one here seems to want to have. No one seems to think TikTok is an issue apparently.

                Edit: it’s been an issue since musical.ly, just so we’re clear

            • 5318008@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              Not absolutely sure… but I’ll take “Probably wouldn’t” over “Definitely already does.”

  • SoupBrick@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    I can’t wait for this to be announced as a threat to national security after creating mild competition for YouTube.

    • stumu415@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The scale is different. There are tons of videos on social media right now that are thinly veiled instructions on how to destroy flock cameras. Something like that would NOT fly in china.

  • Ex Nummis@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • arindam@feddit.online
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      3 months ago

      I found clip.place , a peertube instance really good alternative to YouTube. I am sure there are others.

      • Osan@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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          3 months ago

          YouTube barely gives a financial incentive for most creators, that’s why most of them take sponsorship deals and/or use Patreon.

          • pikl@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            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.

            • Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca
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              3 months ago

              Tbh as someone who wouldn’t be in it for the money PeerTube seems awesome. And if you were in it for the money, imagine being like the first big channel on there? You’d probably really do well.

            • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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              Do you understand what “barely” means? I didn’t say no financial incentive, I said barely. And Youtube taking almost half of your ad revenue (which itself is pocket change unless you’re a channel focused on investing, law, software development or real estate or you’re a channel regularly making over 100k videos) is barely a financial incentive. People complain about Valve taking 30% from game sales and Youtube takes 45%.

              But you are correct in the sense that you can still make decent money with Youtube ads. But to make worthwhile money you need to make videos in the niches advertisers like, target an audience advertisers like (almost exclusively English speaking audience) and make videos that make at least over 1k views (which instantly puts you in the top 10% of content creators). Or be in the top 1% of content creators and average over 100k views per video. If you’re making something like gaming videos for 10k viewers Youtube pays you around $5 per video. At that point for the same video and viewers you’re probably going to make more money from the Peertube donation button than Youtube ad revenue.

              So no, I’m not lying.

        • recarsion@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 months ago

          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.

        • arindam@feddit.online
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          3 months ago

          These things take time. Depends on instances. There are audience for YouTube. I am happy to bet on Peertube.

    • BzzBiotch@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You will be invited with open arms, mr Cumfart. And then shot, of course. Can’t have any of those pesky gay ass Uyghurs turning our kids gay and Uyghur, now can we?

  • lemmelemmy@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    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

    • 0x0@infosec.pub
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      3 months ago

      Thank you for pointing out that shitnugget, its enough for me to know that i never will use bilis platform out of sheer principle

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        I mean if another competitor rises up, he’ll just create an account there too. You’re stuck with peertube pretty much

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Bilibili isn’t going to be any better about censorship. It just has a slightly different list of forbidden topics.

  • Dæmon S.@catodon.rocks
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    3 months ago

    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

    • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Thanks for explaining your experience, I’ll check it out once in a while to see what they have to offer.

    • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I wonder if they are going to use advanced AI translations including voices. That would really open up their content to the west. Although much of it is probably pretty weird as far as I’ve seen (via website / GrayJay) - but so is youtube if you wander off the save paths lol.

      • Dæmon S.@catodon.rocks
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        3 months ago

        Sincerely? I hope not, or at least it must be an opt-in thing rather than something forcefully imbued into the platform.

        Languages that I don’t know may pose a language barrier to me, but at the same time there’s something magic in getting to recognize (and even trying to spell/write) certain words and symbols once I put myself into trying to figure out what’s written and how it’s written.

        This is how I managed to learn (albeit imperfectly and in a fragmented manner) the ideographs I mentioned earlier, among several other languages, including the so-called “dead languages” such as Sumerian and Akkadian (e.g. whenever I see “𒆤”, I know it’s “lil” meaning wind/spirit)… And this is how I learned, to give broader examples, what a “bumat” (البومة) is in Arabic and which letters are involved in its writing, or what’s the difference between a “búho” and a “mochuelo” and a “lechuza” in Spanish, or what a “fukurou” (フクロウ) is in Japanese, or what a “chouette” is in French, or what an “oehoe” is in Dutch (especially how one was able to enfrighten two Dutch villages years ago, the cute yet fierce “terror-oehoe”), or “Eule” in German, or more symbolic words such as “lila” (לילה) “night” in Hebrew or “Лилит” as the Russian transliteration for Hebrew “לילית”… I was able to learn, or at least memorize, a ton of things across languages… Without AI.

        Any kind of automatic translation, especially when AI-powered and fused into the UI, would hardly let me learn a language, because it’d bring the whole thing chewed up and translated, with no means for me to break the sentence down to its constituent words and letters/symbols and how much the surrounding context changes their meanings… not to mention how it ends up wiring our brains to expect the machine to do the reading for us, then we become dependent on machines to do what’s essentially part of being a living being (humans and whatnot).

        Also, translation often involves nuance, tone, sarcasm, emotions. AIs can be able to do “sentiment analysis” and connect words together in order to derive an assessment, but it’ll be devoid of the attempted connection from whoever wrote the text being translated.

        That said, Bilibili does have an automatic translation for titles and comments, turned on by default. I deliberately turned it off, because I want to see the Chinese ideographs, even though I’m not able to truly understand what I’m reading there. I expect to learn them from context and repetition, from trial and error… And when I get to see one of the ideographs standing out before my vision as something I know, getting to see them and yelling “hey, I know these two symbols, these are baxi 巴西 and together they mean Brazil”… Oh, there’s a whole fun to it, a fun that’s virtually non-existent when a clanker is doing all the heavy lifting.

        Don’t get me wrong, I do use translators, I’m not against translators, but I personally prefer using them manually, under my own pace and command while also being able to isolate certain words from surrounding sentences, this way getting to expand my vocabulary a little bit through a research of my own (e.g. looking it up on Wiktionary or other dictionaries out there), because I want to be able to learn something, anything, from it.

        !technology@lemmy.world

        • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          Sounds like you’re pretty talented with languages! But people learn differently. I would like to learn Chinese though. But I would like to learn a lot of things haha.

  • kaitco@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    How many unskippable ads before I can watch a 3-minute video?

    If it’s less than 2, I’m sold!

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      Its 1, but the video is 2 hours 39 minutes long. It’s just “HEAD ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!” on repeat.

  • percent@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    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.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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

        • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
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          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.

        • ඞmir@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          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.

  • Deniz@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    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

    • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Okay peertube, now’s your time to shine! Become the default for the Fediverse by stepping in during this power struggle

  • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

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

    • redditStinksSuperBad@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Knowing our govt, Google will lobby them to ban BiliBili so they can enjoy classic american protectionism. Can’t make it in a free market so just ban / tariff the competition to hell.

          • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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            3 months ago

            you know, way how america interferes with competition kind of reminds me of communism. Of course not exactly the same, but the what is allowed and what is not works in kind of similar way. The rich elite are even the “communist party” that runs things.

    • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.orgBanned
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      3 months ago

      the way i imagine it:

      • as long as it’s american companies running everything, it’s “fair” and “free market”.
      • as long as some company from abroad manages to do things better and more efficient, and american companies come under pressure, we’ll suddenly erect trade barriers and market hurdles to “protect american values”, “for our national security” or sth else. i’ve seen this soo many times. people who “just follow the rules” as long as the rules benefit them. as soon as the same rules start biting them in their own ass, suddenly for some reason they say that we need to change the rules.
      • Calibree@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Kinda like the EV situation in Europe (especially germany). European car makers benefited from cheap chinese labor force for centuries now while their executives, sitting in china, saw in real time how china started working on EV cars and thought nothing about it, riding high on their hubris since “no one could ever outpace them”. And now that china outpaced them the european coalition quickly released enormous tariffs on chinese EV imports to “secure the european car market” and “save themselves from the sheer wave of cheap (and nowadays also way better) EV cars.” When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

  • CumbrianCucumber@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    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

    • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • Doom@lemmy.world
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          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.

      • 7101334@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yep, this is why my security cameras are all from Chinese companies. Though I guess the NSA still owns the Wifi lol

    • abc@suppo.fi
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      3 months ago

      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?

      • CumbrianCucumber@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • ¬∃x(∀y(y∈x↔y∉y))@programming.dev
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          3 months 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.

    • busted_Anoose@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      I suspect like most things in China, as long as you aren’t Picking quarrels and provoking trouble you will be able to slag off the US all you want. But don’t you dare criticize the CCP, because apparently that hurts the feelings of all the people and they already suffer enough under Xinnie the pooh’s iron dick

  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    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.

      • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 months ago

          Hasn’t had any issues that weren’t rectified within a day for me. It has sorta yt-dlp functionality integrated with any source (so exporting your playlist to a local backup is a breeze).

          Since the community can add their own sources, it’s relatively easy to find one if the one you want isn’t on the official support list. You also can use the client on any non-apple device so that’s cool. (Even has local sync which is sick)

          As for the IP stuff, it usually only stops playback if YT flags you as a bot (since the client doesn’t send the telemetry data back to google that would normally validate your “humanity”), but something as simple as a VPN location/address change is enough to keep on watching (and the original address will work again within an hour).

    • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I thought China has extremely strict porn laws and laws censoring gory content, I’d expect it to be even worse in that regard. PeerTube and Odysee seem the most promising right now

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Porn is illegal in China in any form. That’s why their social media is 90% softcore porn of girls “testing workout equipment”. I’m not even kidding, until you train your algo to ignore this almost all content is softcore porn bait and not even social media. Even e-commerce is just porn now lol

      • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        From what I’ve seen, you can avoid the gore issues by desaturating the gory image or part of the video. The porn thing is true, women will use image stickers, mosaics or other obscuring methods to cover up even small amounts of cleavage, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t thirst trap content, it just looks a little different.

        That just doesn’t have a big impact on the content I actually want to see, so I don’t really mind it.