All this, and a few months later MD was basically worshipped for launching their first mousepad sale. I remember a long ago, a scans group launched merch they had made themselves in an attempt to support the group & make some side cash for rewarding their staff & for website maintenance, they were shot down in the most demeaning manner in a matter of days, flamed for being money-grubbers and boycotted for a short while. What pisses me off about the whole merch shop thing is. Btw, their best defense to this whole situation was 'crypto values change', and a direct quote "converting large quantities of crypto to fiat is a pain." About transparency: I don't ever recall hearing them admit to holding such sums prior to it being accidentally found out by an individual, after which the best way I can describe the situation is. Also, around 6 months ago it came to light MD had ~$77k stashed away in crypto which further shows that their stance of the scans groups that either accept donations or have any ads network on their sites are bad/evil is. I've personally had a lot of discussion about this topic, but at the core, the fact that they still have a merch shop while having flamed scans groups for even accepting donations (or for compensating the scans groups' staff at all) is at the very least hypocritical. at this point, the argument "mangadex is non-profit" has lost its footing in my eyes. Catching malware and forgiving is another. Supporting a site through ads is one thing. The direction the team and site is currently going in doesn't inspire confidence. I can understand readers who cannot pay for everything they read but batoto isn't interested in anyone but their own profits lately. You could again argue batoto isn't the worst thing out there, there are worse aggregators who steal from scanlation groups and never credit them and I'd agree but whataboutism shouldn't be the standard we hold ourselves to. Blatant profiteering is what invites DMCAs and spoils the fun for everyone involved. This ripper in particular who seems toxic and on a power trip because modĪrguable but the general lack of moderation(I don't know if it's due to lack of resources or intentional but some complaints like changing, taking down chapters get taken care of much faster than other complaints?) and ad revenue(which, granted could be used for server maintenance) with lack of transparency like it is for mangadex. It hurts authors/creator pipeline and you could make similar arguments as for pirating movies and ripped media on other aggregators but bato actively rewards this behaviour The general ripped uploads of licensed content. Knowing stuff affects your enjoyment of it so I'd warn any readers who struggle with keeping clear conscience to stop here.
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