BitChute

Bit Chute Limited, BitChute's corporate identity, was registered by Ray Vahey in January 2017 in Newbury, England.[2][14][15] At the time of the site's launch, Vahey described BitChute as an alternative to mainstream platforms; he believed these platforms had demonstrated "increased levels of censorship" over the previous few years by banning and demonetising users, and "tweaking algorithms to send certain content into obscurity".[16]

In November 2018, BitChute was banned from PayPal.[17][18] PayPal also banned Alex Jones, the Proud Boys, Tommy Robinson, and several anti-fascist groups and users at the same time.[17]

In January 2019, BitChute announced in a post on Gab that they would move their domains over to Epik, a small domain registrar known for accepting the registration of websites that host far-right content.[10][19]

In March 2020, a new provision to Germany's Network Enforcement Act required social media companies to report instances of hate speech on their platforms to authorities. However, Coda reported that while the law applies to platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, BitChute is one of the platforms not affected by the provision.[20] In early August 2020, Twitter began blocking posts linking to the site.[21]

As of January 2021, BitChute was in the process of being reported to Ofcom by the Community Security Trust after discovering Holocaust denial and Holocaust glorification content on the website, among other content considered harmful by the charity such as conspiracy theories related to COVID-19.[22] The trust's blog stated this will be an important test case for Ofcom's new role with regards to regulation of social media in the United Kingdom, especially concerning extremism and hateful content.[23]

Since launching, BitChute has accommodated far-right groups and individuals.[lower-alpha 1] The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in 2019 that the site hosts "hate-fueled material", and the Anti-Defamation League wrote in 2020 that "BitChute has become a hotbed for violent, conspiratorial and hate-filled video propaganda, and a recruiting ground for extremists".[10][11] According to a report from anti-extremism group Hope not Hate in 2020, BitChute "actively promotes" content which was removed from other platforms as hate speech. Hope not Hate also documented videos hosted on BitChute supporting or produced by terrorists groups, including ISIS and the neo-Nazi groups National Action and Atomwaffen Division.[6][12] A report from British Jewish group Community Security Trust says that some terrorist videos have been on the site for over a year, and that BitChute only removes this content when forced to.[7][24] One academic analysis found that BitChute had more hate speech than Gab, but less than 4chan. It found that only a small group of channels on the network had any meaningful engagement, almost all of which pushed conspiracy- and hate-laden content.[25]

The far-right conspiracy theory channel InfoWars migrated to BitChute after being banned by YouTube.[2] Prominent far-right and alt-right video creators who have cross-posted to both YouTube and BitChute include Lauren Southern, Stefan Molyneux, Millennial Woes, and Paul Joseph Watson.[1][3]

The platform also hosts misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.[6] The conspiracy theory video Plandemic has been has been viewed on BitChute millions of times after having been removed from other platforms for spreading medically harmful misinformation.[26][27][12]

BitChute is part of a group of "alt-tech" websites that position themselves as less strictly-moderated alternatives to mainstream social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.[5][9] Deen Freelon and colleagues writing in Science characterised BitChute as among the alt-tech sites that are "dedicated to right-wing communities", and listed the site along with 4chan, 8chan, Parler, and Gab. They noted there are also more ideologically neutral alt-tech platforms, such as Discord and Telegram.[9]

BitChute does not rely on advertising, and users can send payments to video creators directly.[28] Since its launch, the site has promoted its use of the peer-to-peer technology WebTorrent as a means to decentralise hosting and reduce costs.[13][29]

At launch, the site claimed it was using peer-to-peer WebTorrent technology.[13] However, a November 2019 report by Fredrick Brennan, published in The Daily Dot, failed to find any evidence of peer-to-peer data transfer in BitChute's videos.[30] All videos Brennan downloaded came directly from BitChute's servers, with no part of the videos received from peers. According to Brennan, magnet links on the site don't work. Brennan challenged BitChute's use of the word "delist" to describe deplatforming users, saying that the wording is misleading in that it makes BitChute seem falsely similar to BitTorrent (where a site maintains one "list" of content, but independent trackers may be created as well), when in reality BitChute is just deleting a user's videos from the BitChute site.[30]

• List of video hosting services
• PeerTube