WARNING: Reports have been received regarding the presence of highly disturbing and not safe for work (NSFW) videos, including content of a graphic nature such as gore, as well as instances of racist and anti-Semitic material visible on the front page, posted by users. It is advised to exercise discretion and enter the site at your own risk.
VidLii is a video sharing site that was launched by Jan in 2015, It became one of the first in the Alt-Vid Community to recreate old YouTube by taking it's design from the classic YouTube layout of the late 2000s.
For more detailed information on the drama that happened near the end of the 2010s, see this page.
History
Early Years (2015-2018)
The first version of what would become VidLii was created in 2015 by Jan under the name "ClipBits". The site looked identical to the 2005 interface of YouTube, without having many features on the main page. In August of the same year, the site look was updated to the 2006 version of YouTube. Sometime around 2016, the name of the website changed to "VidBit" where It changed its interface to the late 2008-early 2009 YouTube until Jan decided to briefly take it down which led to the short lived VidBitFuture. That site changed its name to "VidLii" in 2017. For most of the year, it got many updates such as adding a password recovery feature as well as the TestLii program for testing and experimenting with new features, playlists features for channels, inbox sections, a page for uploading fan-made themes, awards, featured video selection for channels and the option to switch to the Cosmic Panda channel layout (a.k.a the YouTube Layout from 2011-2013) complete with social features, and user account management settings. The site gained attention and exposure thanks to a popular Russian YouTuber known as NFKRZ, who made a video featuring VidLii. More features were announced, including annotations, groups and a possible mobile app. During NFKRZ's very short time on VidLii, some people in the community criticized him for "ruining VidLii" for bringing over a toxic userbase to the site.
Vlare, VidLii Remake, and departure of Jan (2018-present)
In May 2019, Vlare, a site originally starting as a custom theme for VidLii in 2018 before it was decided to spin it off into it's own site, was launched and most of the VidLii community moved to the new site or left the community in general. Even though VidLii remained up its future was in question as Vlare began to become bigger than VidLii, particularly during the COPPA scare on YouTube in late 2019 that led to many channels fleeing to many YouTube alternatives and rocketing Vlare's userbase up significantly for a few months. However, Vlare's abrupt shutdown in August 2020 and the subsequent failure to revive the site caused a lot of the userbase that came from VidLii to return. However, the drama on the site caused several users to leave to other alternative sites or just leave the community altogether.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, Jan began a project to remake all of VidLii with a better code which would allow him to modernize the site and add more features without as much difficulty as he did previously. But in February 2022, Jan sold VidLii and it's sister site BitView to the Russian-based Kolyma Network led by Kuz and lolwut. The benefits of the buyout were to include better video quality as well as no ads, and after February 10, 2022 the site went down for a bit to transfer the servers to the new owners. After the buyout however, the site was once again flooded with a wave of users posting videos containing Neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and racism than ever seen before on the site, as well as Pro-Russia propaganda in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that year. This caused many users to flee to other alternative sites or leave the community for good. On January 18th 2023, Lolwut announced on the site blog that Kuz had finally stepped down and left the site after a decline in overall involvement in the past year and that lolwut was now sole owner of VidLii, and users posting the aforementioned content started getting banned. It is yet to be seen though if this will improve VidLii's current state of decline.
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