Bilibili Responds to Member Privacy Concerns
A user of Chinese microblogging platform Weibo issued a post on Saturday, exposing a membership activity carried out by video-streaming giant Bilibili that appeared to require participants to disclose their name, phone number, ID number, address and other private details, sparking a heating online discussion.
As can be seen from a picture included in the post, the Bilibili activity page shows that user information is authorized for sharing with merchants across specific industries, including automobiles, education, tourism, home decoration, local life services, and more. Users may receive phone calls or messages from such merchants.
The next day, Bilibili responded that the page is for network traffic card applications developed alongside China Unicom, and is not a promotional activity intended to collect private information.
The information filled in by the user is required by the operator and will be used legally. However, the description on the page – which has been deleted – easily leads to misunderstandings, Bilibili said.
On March 3, Bilibili released its financial report for the fourth quarter and whole year of 2021. The platform’s total revenue in 2021 was 19.38 billion yuan ($3.06 billion), up 62% year-on-year, while the net loss reached 6.809 billion yuan, up 120% compared with 3.054 billion yuan in the same period of 2020.
Specifically, Bilibili‘s business composition is divided into four major sectors: livestreaming and members, games, advertising and e-commerce, amassing revenues of 6.935 billion yuan, 5.091 billion yuan, 4.523 billion yuan and 2.835 billion yuan respectively in 2021.
SEE ALSO: Bilibili Reports Net Revenue of $907M in Q4 2021, Up 51% YoY
In addition to reiterating its goal of 400 million monthly active users by 2023, Bilibili also declared a clear break-even goal. Fan Xin, Bilibili‘s CFO, pointed out that the firm’s annual non-GAAP operating loss rate will be narrowed in 2022, and that non-GAAP breaking-even will be achieved in 2024.
