Bilibili (stylized in all lowercase), nicknamed B Site, is a Chinese video-sharing website based in Shanghai where users can submit, view, and add overlaid commentary on videos.

[6] As it grew, he reshaped the website to specialise in video sharing and launched it on 14 January 2010 with the name Bilibili, a nickname for the protagonist Mikoto Misaka in the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun.

Later that year, Xu Yi founded the startup, Hangzhou Huandian Technology (Chinese: 幻电; pinyin: huàndiàn; lit.

[8] However, the program was censored after three episodes for being reported as unauthorised operations of Internet audio-video broadcasting services and Hangzhou Huandian Technology was penalised and fined ¥10,000 by the local government.

[9] Bilibili started to display logos on its homepage in August 2012 to indicate its affiliation with the state-owned Shanghai Media Group and share the use of various content provider licenses in the hopes of avoiding future legal risks.

Meanwhile, anonymous visitors to its website were redirected to a subdomain of Shanghai Media Group Broad Band subsidiary (bilibili.smgbb.cn).

In November 2014 Chen Rui [zh] (Chinese: 陈睿) was appointed CEO and chairman of the board of Bilibili.

[10][11][12][13] Chen was an early member of Bilibili's community and started watching anime on the platform in 2010, before he met Xu Yi in 2014 when he was convinced to become the company's earliest investor.

[20] In March of that year Bilibili filed for an initial public offering of up to US$0.4 billion on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

[24] Upon completion of the deal, Sony and Bilibili signed an agreement for the expansion of anime and mobile games within the Chinese market.

[32] Besides hosting video content, Bilibili's main feature is a real-time captioning system that displays user comments as streams of scrolling subtitles overlaid on the screen, visually resembling a danmaku shooter game.

Another type of comment unique to Bilibili is a "high energy alert" (高能预警), which is a kind of spoiler warning, to tell the audience that something exciting or climactic is approaching.

[36] Bilibili users communicate not only through text but also by frequently using emojis and ASCII art to express emotions or add humor.

Research result states that when the main purpose of watching videos is entertaining, the bullet comments meets the leisure and self-expression needs of users,[38] though the Ministry of Culture of China has criticised the bullet comment system for allowing the spread of hateful messages on videos.

[45] On 15 June 2017, Bilibili launched a "discipline committee", allowing members to arbitrate reports of violations in some communities and decide whether the behaviour is illegal, and vote on the penalty.

The National Communications Commission required provider Chief Telecom to cease the tie-up immediately after the issue was discovered by a Taiwan-based think tank.

Video on demand services based in mainland China are forbidden to operate in Taiwan due to national security concerns.

[59] In April 2019, a repository called "Bilibili website backend codes", with a large number of usernames and passwords, was published on GitHub.

Bilibili responded that the leaked code was from an older version of their website and that they had taken "defensive steps to ensure the accident won't compromise user data security".

[60] On 7 February 2022, an influencer known as Wang Luobei posted on Weibo about the death of a content moderator while at work in Bilibili's Wuhan subsidiary during the Lunar New Year holiday period.

The cause of death was suspected to be overwork, sparking controversy amid the prevalence of the 996 work schedule in China's internet industry.

The response was refuted by a Weibo user who claimed to be the cousin of the deceased, stating that he did not return home for the festive period and stayed behind in Wuhan for work.

On 16 January, Bilibili confirmed the misuse of authority, terminated the employee, reported the case to regulators, and issued a public apology.

The company removed the malicious code, disciplined related supervisors, and offered the affected user a one-year premium membership as compensation.