China’s popular YouTube alternative Bilibili relaunches app globally with English support
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. The company has also confirmed that it is developing an English-language version of its main website, although no launch date has been announced yet.
Bilibili is also expanding its international presence with hiring in markets including Japan, the United States, and Europe. A new X account aimed at global creators has said that Bilibili is “going global” and that the US and Chinese versions will offer the same content. The company has already been encouraging international creators to publish directly on its main Chinese platform.
The company is also working on new monetization options for creators, including a marketplace that will connect them with brands for sponsored content and advertising partnerships. Still, there are few details on how this global expansion will actually work, what features the relaunched app and upcoming English website will offer specifically for Western users, and of course, how Bilibili plans to handle privacy, moderation, and the rather obvious question of censorship outside China.
- Video Streaming App
- Freemium
- Proprietary
External links
- bilibili Creator Hub's Thread on X@bilibili_create on X • Official source
- China’s YouTube, Bilibili, plans global expansion, English-language siteSemafor
Comments
i guess it means now people will have to choose between two evils of surveillance lolz, at least for platforms that are able to pay money to ppl who create videos.
Pretty sure it's already preemptively banned in US, along with all the cheap and useful pieces of technology that come from China, even before Google is starting to lobby against it.
They gave us TikTok, Now its time for some BiliBili !
link to English please
Both the iOS and Android store links were included in the article!
oops.. thought it was ready online too.. thanks
Hopefully it takes off. From what my friends have said, moderation for videos and comments is pretty lax outside of politics and topics like (pro) LGBT. Which is fine because I'm tired both of those.
Signing off a "orchestra" of gaplessly controlled discourse about politics and personality, going against freedom, can't go wrong? I do agree that the way discourse happens is leading nowhere and is draining. I'd even say comment sections take away rather than adding anything (except a giggle and shallow validation, take them away and after a 2sec blind confusion you see less impulsiveness in the world), but either "differentiated" / with a variation of viewpoints or none. Doesn't mean pop-culture is the answer, just when shaping world views, maybe give the benefit of differentiation.
I wonder where you draw the line between "moderation" and "censorship" ...
I draw that line between moderation and censorship right after doxxing, sending real death threats, and similar extremes. Plus let's not act like our websites over here are any better when it comes to censorship - e.g. remember how bad pre-Elon Twitter was?
I'm not sure what you mean by "our websites", but I'll assume that it is either the part of the WWW written in a European language (which is well over 50% of the whole WWW) or simply the "rest" of the Internet that lies outside of China's Great Firewall (which is an even larger portion of the total) In any case, for example, inside China there is a complete censorship against mentioning the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989. To the point that such events are unknown to many Chinese citizens. I don't know of an example of "censorship"/"moderation" in what you describe as "our websites" erasing or attempting to erase a historical event. Can you point me to any such example?
Actually, nevermind. I just spent 13 hours wrangling my autistic coworkers and I don't have the patience for another.
😂😂😂 I'm so sorry you have to endure that every day at your job. It must be awful!!
Bilibili actually already entering market outside China years ago, towards SEA market. They promote things heavily to Indonesian market, you can even watch anime and donghua legally there.