Alt Tech Spotlight: BitChute

Alt Tech Spotlight is a series where I take a closer look at alternative software and service from what is considered mainstream platforms. I’m tired of trying to find alternatives and getting articles that do nothing more than list them and describe them in one paragraph.

I believe that it’s best to try and give a more detailed overview so that people who are looking for alternatives can get a better understanding of what they’re getting as well as hopefully provide some criticism for these services so that they may improve in the future.

YouTube is a platform that I’m certain everyone on the internet has heard of. People have made their careers on it, and millions watch it everyday. However, just because it’s one of the most popular website, along with being the most popular video hosting site, doesn’t mean it’s perfect. In fact, a lot of people would say that YouTube is filled with problems.

From copyright issues, censorship, and apparent poor treatment of their content creators. The site is far from ideal for users. It’s lead a lot of people searching around for alternatives, myself included. That’s where Bitchute comes in.

Unlike other competitors such as Vimeo or Dailymotion, Bitchute main standouts are its commitment to not censor its users and the way it handles video. What is most likely of interest to people of Steemit would be the decentralized nature of video hosting. Using webtorrent technology instead of servers owned by the company is a good way to lower cost, something that’s plagued other alternatives such as Vidme.

But it takes more than a few unique features for someone to step up and compete with YouTube, so I wanted to discuss what makes this platform good, and some of the issues I have with it currently.

Performance

Probably the most important aspect for people given the technology powering this site is how well do videos play? Well in my experience, I can play through pretty much most videos without a hitch. I’ve had couple of times over the months I’ve used this site where a video would just stop loading, and I’d have to refresh the page to get it working again. I’m not sure what exactly is the cause, but most would point to the developing technology as the primary culprit.

Even older videos that are over a year old have played fine for me. This was something that was a bit of a concern for me, but Bitchute pleasantly surprised me there. However not everything is great on the video front.

For starters, there’s no way to adjust video quality. Which is a problem since video appear to be only available as 480p or 360p, I can’t tell since there’s no way to find out as I could see. For gaming, my preferred genre, this is an issue since the faster pace make things a pixelated mess. I suppose this is going to be growing pains for the platform going forward. It certainly makes it inferior to its competitors given that I believe they all have HD quality at the least.

User Interface/Experience

When you open up Bitchute for the first without an account, your greeted with their “all” page. Which seems to pretty much be the list of every video sorted by the most recently uploaded. Chances are for 99% of you, this will be video you either don’t care about or even dislike.

Above the videos are essentially recommended channels. Though I don’t believe they are curated or chosen by the admins of the site, rather just randomized. Their “popular” tab doesn’t really seem all that different from the “all” tab and I don’t really think it needs to exist to be honest.

Finally there’s the “subscribed” and “trending” tab, they need no explanation for what they are. Of course to have anything on the subscribed tab you need to have an account first. Making one was easy, just an username, email, and password are all you need. I’ve had an account for over a year now and there’s been no problem for me.

Something I like about the site’s layout is the sidebar that contains the topics you can find on the site. I wish YouTube had a better way to manage those categories to try and find new creators to follow and watch. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only way to find new creators. Their search function is absolutely terrible, I can look up some term hoping to find video about it and most of the results will have nothing at all that I’m looking for. Anyone using this site is better off just avoiding that function until they find a way to improve it.

The video player itself had most of the features one would expect minus the aforementioned quality option. You can change the speed of the video, seeking is done quickly, and there’s even a picture-in-picture mode. Though that still has a few quirks to work out.

Outside of this the website is pretty plain, there’s a night mode that’s about all you can do to change the way it looks. I’m fine with it, but anyone interested can just take a look for themselves and decide how they feel.

Extras

The majority of content on Bitchute is political, unsurprising given their stance against censorship making is a place that I believe to be a decent way to talk without getting silenced. Not a problem for me, since it’s part of the reason I gave this site a try and I understand this is something that will come from being censorship free. However I’m certain that a lot reading this will disagree.

I believe that there is enough non-political content to be of interest to most, but unless more creators either make the jump or create secondary channels here. That will always remain the minority.

Something else I like about the service is that they don’t pull any undue favors to certain types of content creators, unlike YouTube. Ironically though that has still lead to the trending page featuring the same creators over time. This appears to be an effect of these creators always having large audiences on YouTube and therefore are major reasons why most of the user base are on this site in the first place.

My final point about Bitchute are the comments sections. They currently are using the Disqus service as a means for comments to appear below videos. I have a problem that they are using a third-party service when they stand for free speech. Since Disqus has their own separate terms of service and don’t stand against censorship in the same way as Bitchute, I just feel that this doesn’t fit their business goals. My advice to them would be to either find another service that shares their values, or create their own in-house solution because I do see that as a weak point in anti-censorship.

In conclusion, I believe that this site has a lot of potential in the future thanks to it's experimental concept as a decentralized video platform. It's good enough that I've used it almost daily for viewing content. However there are still some flaws that prevent it from getting really big and I'm certain that as it stands it's definitely not for everyone. But if you're someone that really hates the censorship YouTube has been in engaged in the last few years, then I believe this site should be high up on the list of alternatives to check out.