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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[–] 159 points 2 months ago* (19 children)

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

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  • [–] 28 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Maybe things change in the future, but right now I see VHS tapes at local thrift shops as being bigger competition to houtube than this.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    Absolutely already a national security concern, but also technically already banned by the bill which banned TikTok.

    Question is how hard they need to stroke Trump for it to be unenforceable.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    What is the national security concern?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (11 children)

    Psychological operations and warfare, mainly disinformation campaigns akin to TikTok used to sway political sentiment in favor of authoritarians such as Trump.

    Equally bad: extreme data gathering, also akin to tiktok.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (10 children)

    I guess. TikTok did raise awareness of the Gaza genocide and, by extension, create instability in the US. It also distanced the public from the US government's closest ally, Israel.

    https://www.theverge.com/features/761076/gaza-images-starvation-tiktok-ban

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago* (9 children)

    It directly promoted GOP leading up to 2024 and even Trump by name:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/06/tiktok-pro-republican-algorithm-2024-election

    Then they did the exact same thing by promoting the AFD in Germany:

    https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tiktok-and-x-recommend-pro-afd-content-to-non-partisan-users-ahead-of-the-german-elections/

    This has NOT distanced the USA from Israel; they have never been closer. The GOP are pushing bills that will combine Israel military with the USA's.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (8 children)

    Brother, according to that logic, YouTube is a national security risk. I was refering to things the American govt labels as a national security risk to protect corporate interests.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    YouTube is run by a company within the USA.

    That does not compare to a company run by a hostile dictatorship's military.

    Nor has it had nearly the same impact: there was a 10 point shift among youth voters in favor of conservatives after TikTok, a complete reversal of a century old trend.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    Your argument is that TikTok creates a national security risk by directing users to right or alt-right leaning views.

    You are ignoring YT's documented past of doing this exact thing because "China bad".

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/29/276000/a-study-of-youtube-comments-shows-how-its-turning-people-onto-the-alt-right/

    YouTube also funneled German users to that same alt-right party.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/europe/youtube-far-right-extremism.html

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    As an analogy:

    If an American kills an American it's a crime

    If a Chinese op kills an American it's warfare

    Perhaps stick to killing yourselves instead

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

    America is already doing more harm to itself than any external nation is, so you don't have to worry if you want it's people to suffer.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Ah yes, you say we should do multiple times more harm to people who commit self harm, is that your moral philosophy?

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  • [–] 65 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (8 children)

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

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 303 points 2 months ago (47 children)

    I trust this as much as I trust big American tech platforms.

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  • [–] [S] 129 points 2 months ago (22 children)

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

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  • [–] 52 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    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...

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  • [–] 1 point 2 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.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    As far as I'm aware, google isn't enacting a genocide... as far as I'm aware

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, but Google's just doing it because it's profitable, not because they're hell-bent on annihilating an ethnicity /s

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    That means your awareness needs to be expanded my friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus

    This is a good (but non-exhaustive) list to look through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Gaza_war

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  • [–] 2 points 2 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

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (12 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    Ah yes, instead of US big brother you give it to offshore Big Brother.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 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

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    Political censorship is definitely worse so I‘m not going to bother.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Because YouTube doesn't engage in anything like that ofc.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Are you seriously insinuating that the level of censorship on YouTube is anywhere close to Chinese platforms? A quick look on both websites would give you that answer very quickly.

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  • [–] 90 points 2 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Given how China just took all the money away from and sent to prison the CEO of evergrande, I'm starting to trust their apps more than american ones.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 months ago*

    The only reason that happened was because that CEO's decisions lead to massive negative results in China's real-estate sectors, which in turn cost the Chinese government a lot of money, and THAT is why that criminal actually saw consequences.

    Don't take that as proof that China judges everyone fairly regardless of wealth/status. As long as you keep your crimes to an extent that it doesn't cause a massive backlash on large swaths of the country, it's a different ballgame.

    As others have said, you'd be wise to distrust both.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 30 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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

    If it’s less than 2, I’m sold!

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