BitChute
| Video hosting website. Alternative to YouTube. |
Started: January 2017
Constitutes: Alt Tech
Main focus: Free speech
BitChute is a video hosting website.[1] It experienced a large rise in traffic during early 2020, as YouTube was active in censoring material about COVID-19 which questioned or dissented from the official narrative.
Censorship
Twitter began blocking any tweets which linked to BitChute videos in August 2020.[2]
In December 2020, Bitchute began censoring "extremist content" after pressure from the UK/US NGO Hope Not Hate, an stated anti-racist organization which also uses its clout to further deep state agendas, such as reducing "vaccine hesitancy"[3], support the dirty campaign against Jeremy Corbyn[4], and the ever expanding general government/corporate censorship[5]. The same month, Bitchute removed the channel of the neofascist Scandinavian group Nordic Resistance Movement. The company did already have a set of community guidelines which prohibited "incitement to violence, terrorism, pirating movies"[6], but in this instance the ban seems to be on more general grounds. As analyst Ciaran Brennan pointed out "While it is perfectly reasonable to take exception to the group in question, one must appreciate that once precedents are set there is no stopping the censorship machine....Like YouTube beforehand, deplatforming begins with the hardcore fringes but doesn’t end there." [7]
Bitchute was also put under financial pressure. As a result, the company lost some server hosting, its office space, and other suppliers. It also lost our bank account with HSBC, a bank account it had held without any issues since the launch in 2017. When Bitchute tried to open a new account with a different bank and transfer its money, the new bank rejected Bitchute just as the funds had reached them. The money was returned to HSBC, but Bitchute could no longer access it, and as of December 2022, still has not retrieved its money from HSBC.[8]
Hit pieces
Bitchute has received unfavorable reviews from the The Daily Dot in 2018.[9]
Technical details
Bitchute was intended as peer-to-peer platform, so that users would share their bandwidth for videos they are currently watching with others; apparently this was not practicable and BitChute uses centralized servers for it's content.[10] In case a video does not start the playback, which happens on occasion, manually changing the 'seed' server can help.[11]
Rumble
Bitchute has integrated video feeds from Rumble.[12]
BitChute on Wikispooks
BitChute pages are semantically represented by the property:Has bitchute:
References
- ↑ https://handwiki.org/wiki/BitChute
- ↑ https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-censors-all-links-to-bitchute/ saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2021/02/17/vaccine-hesitancy-why-it-is-happening-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/
- ↑ https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/07/27/labour-antisemitism-way-back-new-low/
- ↑ https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/10/a-better-web-regulating-to-reduce-far-right-hate-online/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/bitchute_/status/1337719700197756929
- ↑ https://www.theburkean.ie/articles/2020/12/13/bitchute-removes-extremist-content-in-partnership-with-hope-not-hate
- ↑ https://archive.is/bGEgf
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20181102184752/https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/bitchute/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20191127180923/https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bitchute-decentralization-claims/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20230325000510/https://www.reddit.com/r/BitChute/comments/hv2lrb/some_videos_on_bitchute_dont_load_when_i_try_to/
- ↑ https://www.bitchute.com/profile/sGc2q4NntVJD/