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Bilibili
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Anime streaming site Bilibili goes down briefly, driving China’s Gen Z crazy on other social media

  • Bilibili blamed server problems for a brief outage Tuesday night that had the platform’s young users speculating about the company on Weibo
  • The video-streaming site, known for its anime offerings, has grown in influence with China’s Gen Z internet users as it pivots to become a YouTube-like platform

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The Bilibili app download page on a smartphone in Hong Kong on March 23, 2021. Bilibili has become an increasingly important platform for China’s young video-streaming users. Photo: Bloomberg
Tracy Qu
Chinese video-streaming platform Bilibili had a brief outage on Tuesday night, which it blamed on server issues, driving millions of Generation Z users to bemoan the service disruption on microblogging site Weibo, where it became a top trending topic.

Posts about the outage started appearing on Weibo around 11pm – the peak time for online entertainment in China – as users complained about the loss of their nighttime entertainment. Some users had been receiving error messages such as “404 Not Found” or “Sorry, the page is not available now”, screenshots posted online show.

As discussion increased on Weibo, it gave rise to speculation that the company’s Shanghai headquarters had caught fire. The Shanghai fire department responded to the rumours with a notice saying there were no reports of a fire at the address and that no fire alarm had gone off in the building.

By early Wednesday morning, service had resumed. Hong Kong-listed Bilibili issued a statement at about 2am apologising for the outage and attributing it to “operating problems in some of the server rooms”.

The incident reflects the influence of Bilibili, known as China’s answer to YouTube, among young Chinese netizens born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A Weibo topic related to the incident has been viewed more than 130 million times.

One user joked about what must have been an awkward moment for bloggers and influencers that rely on the platform. “Go comfort that horror game blogger. The entire audience disappeared in the middle of the show,” the person posted to Weibo.

Other users sought compensation from the company. “How about a lucky draw? Let’s try [free] memberships,” one Weibo user suggested.

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