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China’s biggest anime site Bilibili removed from app stores amid content “clean up”
Bilibili pledges to form a “discipline committee” of 36,000 users
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
A flurry of bad news descended on Bilibili this week, as Chinese authorities clamped down on it.
I suppose you could say that it means Bilibili has finally made it.
Started in 2009 as a scrappy little place for millennials and Gen Z to watch Japanese anime (mostly unlicensed and illegal), Bilibili has now become one of China’s biggest video-sharing sites -- so big that the Chinese government has finally taken notice.
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The bad news began when state media publicly criticized it for allowing vulgar content on the site. On Thursday its app was taken off various Android app stores.
Finally, on Friday Bilibili said it is “in deep self-review and reflection” after a meeting with the government. It pledged that it would crank up its self-checking capacity and recruit a discipline committee -- totalling 36,000 members.
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Long story short: Bilibili has come to suffer the same fate as many other mainstream video sites in China. And that fate is being invited to a talk with the government… where they demand a clean-up.
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