I've been trying out Bilibili because of some shows. So far first impression is that the ads experience is even more eggregious than Youtube, and they lock HD viewing options behind premium. Hope...
I've been trying out Bilibili because of some shows. So far first impression is that the ads experience is even more eggregious than Youtube, and they lock HD viewing options behind premium. Hope the new English site won't follow the same practice because if they succeed, I could see Youtube realizing that they could get away with being even more invasive. Duopoly is probably not much better than monopoly.
Funny you say that... I've noticed that in the last week or two the ads on my YouTube have very suddenly become much, much longer and unskippable. Maybe around a year ago I noticed a step, but it...
Funny you say that... I've noticed that in the last week or two the ads on my YouTube have very suddenly become much, much longer and unskippable.
Maybe around a year ago I noticed a step, but it wasn't so bad. Ads got a little longer (from like always 3/5 s and around half skippable) to a more varied mix of short and longer ads with fewer skippable.
But now, suddenly I'm seeing regular 30-60s long ads, unskippable! Most skips are just "next" to another ad. Most of which are then unskippable...
If anyone could unseat YouTube for unlimited video hosting for everyone with an account and options to share ad revenue, it would probably be Bilibili since YouTube has outlasted every other...
If anyone could unseat YouTube for unlimited video hosting for everyone with an account and options to share ad revenue, it would probably be Bilibili since YouTube has outlasted every other competitor on the hemisphere and none of the other big players seem to want to go toe to toe with them.
I clicked around and, if YouTube currently has an AI problem, Bilibili has an AI disaster. Like I want to say 80% of the thumbnails are AI-generated and the videos themselves also appear to be AI...
I clicked around and, if YouTube currently has an AI problem, Bilibili has an AI disaster. Like I want to say 80% of the thumbnails are AI-generated and the videos themselves also appear to be AI generated.
I have noticed is that Chinese Bilibili's content seems separate, which seems like a huge fumble (I think they both have the same censorship?) They're basically starting from scratch content-wise which I think explains the above.
It's gonna need a lot more work to be a serious YouTube competitor in the rest of the world
This makes me wonder if bilibili will go the way of tiktok. As in once it hits a point of popularity will it be called a national security risk and be made to be sold to someone in the US...
This makes me wonder if bilibili will go the way of tiktok. As in once it hits a point of popularity will it be called a national security risk and be made to be sold to someone in the US...
It doesn't seem all that much better honestly. I still think that a smaller scale, semi decentralized Yotube competitor would be/have been possible. The basic idea being a central server that...
It doesn't seem all that much better honestly.
I still think that a smaller scale, semi decentralized Yotube competitor would be/have been possible.
The basic idea being a central server that offloads video streaming to the users. It would handle indexing and moderation and stream videos with some minimum amount of recent views to provide fallback and ensure smooth experience. Videos below that could be streamed by the creator, both to lower amount of videos uploaded and raise quality by making people stand behind their content.
It would probably only take tens to hundreds of millions instead of however many billions it would take to emulate Youtube directly.
I think this misses the actual value add of YouTube in the year of our lord 2026. Back in the olden days, yes, YouTube was video infrastructure. This was back when you needed flash player. It was...
I think this misses the actual value add of YouTube in the year of our lord 2026. Back in the olden days, yes, YouTube was video infrastructure. This was back when you needed flash player. It was a different time.
These days, hosting video is trivial. It’s trivial to do on any number of platforms, it’s trivial to do on your own website. Practically every website with user content has video uploads.
What YouTube provides is an audience. That’s the main value add. It’s really easy to host your video on somewhere else, but no one is going to watch your videos.
Making YouTube peer to peer is solving the wrong problem. The problem isn’t video hosting, it’s audience discovery. YouTube is social media - it resembles TikTok fundamentally more than it does infrastructure like Cloudflare.
I've been trying out Bilibili because of some shows. So far first impression is that the ads experience is even more eggregious than Youtube, and they lock HD viewing options behind premium. Hope the new English site won't follow the same practice because if they succeed, I could see Youtube realizing that they could get away with being even more invasive. Duopoly is probably not much better than monopoly.
Funny you say that... I've noticed that in the last week or two the ads on my YouTube have very suddenly become much, much longer and unskippable.
Maybe around a year ago I noticed a step, but it wasn't so bad. Ads got a little longer (from like always 3/5 s and around half skippable) to a more varied mix of short and longer ads with fewer skippable.
But now, suddenly I'm seeing regular 30-60s long ads, unskippable! Most skips are just "next" to another ad. Most of which are then unskippable...
I've been seeing a lot of ads that take up the right-half of the screen mid-video.
If anyone could unseat YouTube for unlimited video hosting for everyone with an account and options to share ad revenue, it would probably be Bilibili since YouTube has outlasted every other competitor on the hemisphere and none of the other big players seem to want to go toe to toe with them.
I clicked around and, if YouTube currently has an AI problem, Bilibili has an AI disaster. Like I want to say 80% of the thumbnails are AI-generated and the videos themselves also appear to be AI generated.
I have noticed is that Chinese Bilibili's content seems separate, which seems like a huge fumble (I think they both have the same censorship?) They're basically starting from scratch content-wise which I think explains the above.
It's gonna need a lot more work to be a serious YouTube competitor in the rest of the world
This makes me wonder if bilibili will go the way of tiktok. As in once it hits a point of popularity will it be called a national security risk and be made to be sold to someone in the US...
Only good thing I see coming from BiliBili is their bullet comments, lol
It doesn't seem all that much better honestly.
I still think that a smaller scale, semi decentralized Yotube competitor would be/have been possible.
The basic idea being a central server that offloads video streaming to the users. It would handle indexing and moderation and stream videos with some minimum amount of recent views to provide fallback and ensure smooth experience. Videos below that could be streamed by the creator, both to lower amount of videos uploaded and raise quality by making people stand behind their content.
It would probably only take tens to hundreds of millions instead of however many billions it would take to emulate Youtube directly.
I think this misses the actual value add of YouTube in the year of our lord 2026. Back in the olden days, yes, YouTube was video infrastructure. This was back when you needed flash player. It was a different time.
These days, hosting video is trivial. It’s trivial to do on any number of platforms, it’s trivial to do on your own website. Practically every website with user content has video uploads.
What YouTube provides is an audience. That’s the main value add. It’s really easy to host your video on somewhere else, but no one is going to watch your videos.
Making YouTube peer to peer is solving the wrong problem. The problem isn’t video hosting, it’s audience discovery. YouTube is social media - it resembles TikTok fundamentally more than it does infrastructure like Cloudflare.
So, Peertube?