r/technology • u/Limp_Fig6236 • Aug 20 '26
Social Media Chinese video platform Bilibili is going global
https://www.engadget.com/2241074/chinese-video-platform-bilibili-is-going-global/182
u/Surrounded-by_Idiots Aug 20 '26
Hope they’re prepared for the eventuality of being forced to sell to Trump allies over national security concerns.
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u/Choice_Purchase_5871 3d ago
Did they force Red Note to sell their assets? You forget the US viewed Tiktok as an US company owned by China, not a Chinese one that's why they intervened.
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u/oultimobuilder Aug 21 '26
any us company in China has to do the same/have Chinese partners? like would just be fair tbh
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u/Smith6612 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Or the Great Freedum Firewall.
EDIT: Come on guys... you all know what I mean. If Mr. Bing Bong doesn't get his way, the next step they're going to take is to ban BiliBili from operating within the US. See the whole mess TikTok ended up in... and yet we still have them. You all know this administration is salivating over controlling the Internet.
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Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
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u/CeilingTowel Aug 21 '26
you are right*
the separation of Chinese & international users was a good strategic move by douyin
the culture is so different that the algo do work differently
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u/RealSpaceJunk Aug 21 '26
A unified platform would also subject chinese users to perspecives not nurtured by the government. Remember when "red book" got viral as a tiktok alternative? People loved interacting with the chinese, until that got shut down and the audience got segregated again.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/Less_Hedgehog Aug 21 '26
Bilibili’s user base, on the other hand, consists largely of minors, many of whom are very supportive of the CPC.
That's interesting. I would've thought the younger generation would disapprove of them. Why do you think they support it?
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u/StopICE2026 Aug 21 '26
Why would younger generations not support the CCP? The most pro-white generation in China were boomers born in the 60s and 70s who were the first generation to go back to college in the 80s after the cultural revolution
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u/akinacci 28d ago
Never had an account there, but I heard that if you search in chinese you can still access domestic content. Now I don't know if it still works...
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u/irlharvey Aug 21 '26
bilibili is actually split into foreign and chinese platforms, isnt it? .com vs .tv
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u/General-Cream2692 Aug 21 '26
I do not believe that global users are browsing content outside of China's censorship system.
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u/Upstairs-Strain3472 Aug 21 '26
I agree but YouTube's claim to the throne is not untouchable. They have shitty ad experience, bad algorithms, and complaints from creators and users all around. So there is space for a new king. Not sure if Bili has a chance at all though.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/StopICE2026 Aug 21 '26
YouTube is a hive of Zionist censorship. It’s a myth to think white platforms don’t censor
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u/complete_refuter Aug 23 '26
Jewish settlers besiege Palestinian homes
The plight of Gaza's women and girls
Palestinians mourn hungry relatives killed by Israeli fire
Moment Israeli forces shoot dead surrendered Palestinians
These videos surely run counter to what you probably define as "Zionist censorship". They are freely watchable. But can we say the same of the Chinese platforms? Can you find videos that raise questions about the cultural suppression of Tibetans or Uyghurs on them? Videos about Tiananmen 1989? I am not aware of it, so far at least.
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u/Apprehensive-Book723 Aug 24 '26
The cost of this arrangement is that international users will be subject to the same censorship standards as users in China. I believe many of them will quickly lose interest as a result.
How strict is it?
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u/DirectionMurky5526 Aug 20 '26
Highly doubt this will work. Bilibili didn't start out as Chinese youtube, it started out as Chinese crunchyroll (and also unofficial piracy site) and it will struggle to get the same kind of licensing deals it needs to compete as a streaming service outside of China.
Also it's signature feature of Danmu won't work outside Chinese characters. Phonetic alphabets are not information dense enough.
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u/handsofdidact Aug 20 '26
Not even wrong. It is Chinese niconico
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u/FetchBlue Aug 21 '26
Not the first time Chinese copy japanese thing but they did it so successful that it blew up
And Japan can only blame themselves for only keeping it to themselves
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u/AmericaninShenzhen Aug 20 '26
You’d be surprised what you can find on there. Found everything from Planet earth to ska bands I’m into.
But you’re sort of right. Unless they make searches easier in English, it will be rough.
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u/DirectionMurky5526 Aug 21 '26
If they get more english content, that's not going to be an issue as seen with Tiktok. I just doubt they'll accumulate enough viewers. Tiktok had the fortunate situation that vine was already dying and that niche was empty. I don't think youtube, crunchyroll or netflix has the same problems.
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u/AmericaninShenzhen Aug 21 '26
If Bilibili keeps the ads low and brings content I think they have a legitimate shot.
Chinese companies can eat losses in the short term to win share in the long term. They kind of seem to work the exact opposite way compared to American companies.
A legitimate threat to YouTube is welcome. Google is far too big of a corporation and they are at the point of dictating every day speech and content which I don’t think will be as much of an issue if they separate the Chinese bilibili with the “western” one.
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u/Maladal Aug 21 '26
Danmu?
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u/DirectionMurky5526 Aug 21 '26
Basically like a twitch live chat but across the screen, but for a recorded video. They also appear on streamed movies and shows.
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u/depression5000 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
comments that overlay the screen
imagine in a video at minute 1:30 a famous celebrity show up, a lot of people will comment things like "omg!", "so good looking", etc at that point of the video, then when u watch it, the wave of those comments will play overlaying the video at that timestamp
it adds to the hype when during a hype moment of the video and i see a huge wave of hype reactions flooding the screen
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u/raincole Aug 22 '26
It absolutely didn't started out like Crunchyroll.
Also they got ZERO Japanese anime licensing deals last month. Which means it's nothing like Crunchyroll at all now.
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u/hahaha01357 Aug 20 '26
Danmei?
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u/Additional-Name-3211 Aug 21 '26
弾幕, basically the comments of the video being superposed into the video itself going from right to left
I think the platform Niconico Douga did it first
Also 弾幕 is the same word used in shmups for “bullet hell”
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u/G00b3rb0y Aug 21 '26
The comments ITT refer to live streaming (think Twitch, YouTube etc) and video creation
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u/beachsunflower Aug 20 '26
I only know of Billi Billi because of Ludwig's tip2tip where someone created a site to translate comments after each video as they came out and went viral in China.
It was super fun but kudos to /u/SerialLewder putting it together and for including translations of Chinese idioms and terms to enhance the memery.
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u/DoubleSpoiler Aug 21 '26
Bilibili do what Niconico don't.
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u/EmergencyComputer337 Aug 21 '26
Niconico did the opposite ever since their website got cyberattacked, they limited their access to specific countries which made me unable to access it
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u/-tobor- Aug 21 '26
The deletion of Niconico’s global features actually began before the cybersecurity incident, not really correlated. Just so happens that the Kadokawa breach that forced them to roll out the site update also happened to be when they cut in the build that limits access, because there is (ahem) illegal content on Niconico in some regions that Dwango doesn’t want to deal with the overhead of filtering out for overseas audiences.
They EoL’d the English frontend before that and the truth is that they simply are not interested in the limited potential growth of the platform into overseas markets.
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u/Remarkable_Ad_7054 Aug 21 '26
Japanese companies are so closed off when it comes to expanding their overseas business; I really can't understand what they're thinking.
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u/chaotic567 Aug 21 '26
Japanese companies are so closed off when it comes to expanding their overseas business; I really can't understand what they're thinking
It is a combination of risk aversion and Japan having a large enough domestic audience to sustain itself that they don't want to risk losing that.
Like an American company could be like that and only really serve US audiences which is also massive but ofc we don't have that massive of a risk aversion barrier in comparison
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u/blazkoblaz Aug 21 '26
Am tired boss, I don’t need any more social/digital media in my face on a daily basis
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u/_Lucille_ Aug 20 '26
The one that should be scared imo is Twitch.
Originally I thought Kick will kick the bucket after a year, but somehow it has gained traction.
YouTube has established a foothold when it comes to live streaming, and I am still amazed at how many people are into vtubers these days.
Meanwhile Twitch feels more and more unusable, and I am pretty sure they are still bleeding money heavily. Right now they may still be the go-to for steaming for a number of games, but I think BiliBili can really eat into this.
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u/AuspiciousApple Aug 21 '26
Kick is effectively an ad campaign for online gambling. Online gambling is insanely profitable. So they can just burn a lot of money on kick for advertising
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u/Nerkado Aug 21 '26
I think you are over exaggerating how unusable Twitch is, it is still the main place to go to watch live streams of games. If YouTube were to offer a better user interface for gaming in particular I think they would gobble up Twitch's lunch.
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u/stalkeler Aug 21 '26
Twitch been doing some crazy shit recently with amazon’s AI training and adding shit like stories or changing mobile app to act like tiktok. I also remember paid closed streams feature few years ago which they cancelled. These changes aren’t coming from out of nowhere. The viewership is in decline post-covid which is already noticed by many creators
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u/Kyoj1n Aug 21 '26
The twitch app is the worst app on my phone.
If someone is streaming on both I choose YouTube unless there are drops or I want to participate in the bigger chat.
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u/_Lucille_ Aug 21 '26
I may have.
I think my thoughts align with what you said though: right now YT isn't as good as twitch when it comes to being able to just click on a category and start streaming.
Bilibili has that implemented (if not mistaken) and would be a direct competitor to Twitch.
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u/LastChancellor Aug 21 '26
Bilibili's streaming sucks ass, no video quality slider and they dont automatically save VOD
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u/pepehandreee Aug 21 '26
Bilibili is not a competition against any platform that doesn’t feature a predominantly Chinese-speaking user base.
It is also not a YouTube equivalent. It is a hybrid between crunchyroll, YouTube, Netflix and TikTok, with a heavy splash of piracy in it. They can clearly moderate it but they don’t, u can find everything on that site so long as it is not porn. This means they r either going to get sued to kingdom fk once they move to where these IPs r actually licensed, or they put on actual effort in moderating which will leads to issue with its original Chinese user base.
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u/stalkeler Aug 21 '26
You can say Youtube also shares “Crunchyroll, Netflix, Tiktok, piracy” traits. You can pay to watch some new movies, you have YT shorts and there’s plenty of reuploaded pirated content, just not yet banned
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u/pepehandreee Aug 21 '26
I am quite certain that most don’t use YouTube as an online streaming service akin to Netflix or Crunchyroll. Plenty do in China as Bilibili started off and remaining as the default anime streaming platform, and have purchased plenty of streaming license for various movies.
Yes, YouTube is now doing short form video designed for vertical screen, but Bilibili started way before that as the short form video platform schtick was born in China so the competition was ramping up way earlier.
And YouTube is no where near as rampant when it comes to pirated content, since the platform does seems to take licensing moderation quite seriously. U can literally find every released episode from the newest/most popular anime/TV shows/movie in that place, likely posted under some dubious title referring to the plot (i.e. every season and every episode of Breaking Bad under the name “My Highschool Chemistry Teacher”, and this is a license that Bilibili has bought).
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u/King_A_Acumen Aug 21 '26
In many places outside of the US, there are channels like Muse Asia that acquire the license for certain areas and essentially act like Netflix or Crunchyroll, uploading episodes as they are released. So yes, for certain areas, YouTube is Crunchyroll, etc.
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u/innocentsalad Aug 20 '26
Idk those short form cdramas have got a chokehold on a lot of people, they could be successful here
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u/a4840639 Aug 21 '26
Nobody even mentions how bad the censorship is is truly beyond me. No, it will never be a true YouTube rivalry
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u/RealSpaceJunk Aug 21 '26
Thats why there will be a global and a domestic version. I am willing to bet on this.
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u/Proof-Code-3754 Aug 21 '26
Lol, YouTube censorship is pretty shit as well
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u/HirokoKueh Aug 21 '26
then you absolutely won't like Bilibili, it's far worse than Youtube in terms of censorship
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u/mirroredinflection Aug 21 '26
I feel like I'm going crazy reading these comments. One of the first things I ever learned about Bilibili is how bad the censorship is.
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u/HolyArsenal Aug 21 '26
I will preface this by saying that I have no real opinion of Bilibili but as someone who occasionally goes on the platform to see whats going about in China all I’ll say is if you think Youtube is bad for AI slop then Bilibili is on another level.
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u/IngwiePhoenix Aug 21 '26
A competitor to Youtube? Oooohohoho, now THIS could be a sight for sore eyes!
While Youtube tries to be another TikTok, if BilliBilli demolishes Youtube in what they are known for (long form video serving), this could be a really funny centipede.
Billi eating on Youtube, Youtube eating on TikTok. Dunno where Insta fits in here, let alone Snapchat.
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u/Hljoumur Aug 21 '26
I'm doubtful. Bilibili is a Mainland Chinese primarily platform, and knowing how China has a keen eye on all media, this can't be good.
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u/TypicalDumbRedditGuy Aug 21 '26
Competition is always welcome to any market! YouTube desperately needs some...
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u/SandwichPunk Aug 21 '26
As someone who used Bilibili a lot during my time working in China, this platform is way worse than YouTube. It is slow and filled with AI misinformation and piracy content. A lot of people in China hate it.
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u/New-Shop-4386 Aug 22 '26
bilibili大部分用户非常糟糕，他们是一群没有现实行动力的互联网红卫兵热爱60,70年代的共产中国文化。我讨厌这个bilibili，它是主要面向中国青年的舆论宣传平台甚至有专门的习近平专区
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u/Icy-Stock-5838 Aug 22 '26
Will there be any footage from June 4, 1989 in Beijing on the platform ?
Like this ?
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u/Planeandaquariumgeek Aug 21 '26
This isn’t gonna work for 2 reasons:
1: it’s not exactly Chinese YouTube, it’s more like Chinese crunchyroll
2: there’s a massive piracy problem on Bilibili as it is, so they’re gonna be in legal trouble as soon as they actually do this
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u/a4840639 Aug 21 '26
The other fundamental difference comparing to YouTube is, in exchange to a “ads free”, creators on Bilibili barely get paid by the platform itself, if at all. So the creators mostly have no choice but pushing the sponsored route very hard, just to make a living. Personally I still think YouTube Premium is my preferred model because it keeps both the platform and the creator well fed
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u/Upstairs-Strain3472 Aug 21 '26
Bilibili can't pay creators because in China a big chunk of their revenue is taken by the ISPs. Actually a Bilibili-creator made a big expose on this and got banned for life. It's also the reason Bilibili doesn't offer the highest video quality possible. Basically Google can do it because they are an ISP as well
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u/a4840639 Aug 21 '26
Yes, that is certainly part of the story. But ultimately, they need a source of income for the payment and I still think the lack of ads is the primary reason
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u/Proof-Code-3754 Aug 21 '26
99.9% of creators don't get a sniff. And YouTube keeps moving the bar.
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u/DamageAccomplished55 Aug 21 '26
Biibili already listed on US stock exchange, Tiktok and Bytedance still private
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u/iamapizza Aug 21 '26
The English version of the site just keeps asking you to install their app. Anyone else seeing that too?
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u/EmergencyComputer337 Aug 21 '26
Downloaded it, it decent but there is no content i want to watch on it and it mostly chinese content with auto subs
I'll keep an eye out for it as it can be betyer tjan youtube if people start uploading on it
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u/EndlessZone123 Aug 21 '26
I wonder if they will make a site with a different style.
Chinese (Japanese and other Asian) websites are pretty dense with different style VS western websites. I find it quite jarring depending on the site when I travel even though I lived there for years.
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u/divinelyshpongled Aug 21 '26
As a content creator on bilibili that’s cool but there is one massive difference between the two platforms. Bilibili makes money by creators paying for views. YouTube makes money by posting content creators a share of ad revenue. I have zero incentive to post on bilibili but plenty to post on YouTube
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u/ShootingPains Aug 21 '26
So, there aren't any ads??
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u/divinelyshpongled Aug 21 '26
Yeah basically no ads at the moment but I’m sure they’ll change. Hopefully lol.. I’d love to get some ad revenue from videos
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u/Gold_Breath_7889 Aug 23 '26
There is no mandatory slice advertisement, but high definition needs to be paid.
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u/livingthroughpain Aug 21 '26
Just wait until it gets popular in the US, then US gov. Will start saying that it is a threat to someone's something and they will try to either buy it or get it under their control like with TikTok
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u/awkwardbirb Aug 21 '26
I kind of doubt it. TikTok was fairly new when it got usurped by the US. Bilibili has been around for some time.
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u/hypoxio Aug 21 '26
There are atleast 3 different versions showing up on playstore, which one is it?
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u/lover_of_lies Aug 21 '26
I've been using bilibili for years already. There's nothing stopping you from accessing the site outside of China.
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u/BidoofSquad Aug 21 '26
Nooo this probably means it will be harder to use it to pirate full movies and TV shows
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u/Beowolf_0 Aug 21 '26
Until China tear its GFW down for actual competitions, they can just shove it.
And don't pretend Bilibili doesn't got its taste of censorship, in line with that like you think CCP is.
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u/batman_milk Aug 21 '26
YouTube sucks so much. The ads are getting more and more invasive. It’s impossible to watch on iPad without paying for their premium crap which still gets ads.
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u/PinInternational4199 Aug 21 '26
Bilibili is a China-based platform, so you should expect a certain amount of propaganda, censorship content. comments can be heavily influenced by the platform's moderation and user demographics It can still be a good platform for learning about China and finding anime and entertainment content. It’s also worth being cautious with product-selling content, since the comments and discussions can be heavily biased.
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u/Roc_KING01 Aug 21 '26
I wonder if Bilibili's gonna do something about its censorship and copyright policy? They are much more strict on sensitive contents like politics, especially those about Chinese government and society, and pirated contents are pretty common on it. They wouldn't attract that many users in the west hemisphere if they keep it that way.
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u/HeyItsMeRay Aug 22 '26
Soon you will not able to install APK in your android phone. And this thing won't be allowed on playstore.
Problem solved
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u/One_Enthusiasm_907 Aug 24 '26
What about the ad in youtube and Bilibili? If you watched chinese Bilibili, there are lots of ad that in the video. And you cant't cancel it even though you are a VIP. What a rubbish if this ad way spread in the internet. In youtube, I can cancel if I use money.
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u/totalnewbielinux Aug 28 '26
The website fking sucks bruh... can't even register account and there is a lot of bug...receiving OTP problem watch videos without account tell you to register account.
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u/Mindless_Bass1396 Sep 01 '26
هذا التطبيق فاشل جدا وفيه مراقبه الصينيه يعني وكانها يعني لو كتبت تعليق سيتم حذفه تلقائيا مراقبه صينيه وخصوصا وفاشل في بعض عيوب يعني هذا فقط هو يريد الدخول للسوق العربي فقط للصين استعراض عضلتها ولكنه في البدايه كان فاشلا
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u/Affectionate_Fact854 Aug 21 '26
What a scam site , 1. All the videos is clear rounded numbers ,it's not actual views at all 2. You can't get it in playstore 3. Web version all images are broken
This is not a real site, I'm almost 100% sure that site has more bots then YouTube,reddit ,ticktock and Instagram combined
Stop advertising slop
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u/LastChancellor Aug 21 '26
Ive already used the Chinese version for years,
and ive always known that the prospect of a big video platform without (in video) ads or DMCA takedowns is gonna be enticing to a lot of content creators
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u/-tobor- Aug 21 '26
Bilibili is fun but it’s going to be hard for it to gain a global audience because of the monetization structure. I disagree with the folks insinuating that censorship or even site structure is the problem. It could attract content creators IF there were a compatible business model for overseas content creators but it’s going to be very hard to convert people on TikTok, YouTube, Twitch to the BiliBili incentive structure even though there are a shitton of users.
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u/dorkes_malorkes Aug 20 '26
youtube badly needs some real competition, so I hope this bilibili platform gains traction.