Anime @ani.social Nemeski @lemm.ee 4mo ago

Crunchyroll Deletes and Disables Comments on Entire Platform, Including Episodes and News Articles

animecorner.me Crunchyroll Deletes and Disables Comments on Entire Platform, Including Episodes and News Articles - Anime Corner

Crunchyroll has seemingly deleted and disabled comments on the entire platform, including episodes and…

48 comments

This is awful, I had a lot of laughs reading crunchy comments. In a way it was one of the biggest anime communities. Maybe we can start a lemmy for them.
- I mean, if bigots took over all the comments to fill them with hate speech on a Lemmy instance, it might makes sense to shut that down, too.
  
  That would make sense, but I never saw hate speech in crunchy comments, but I only read the first page so I am sure the more controversial posts were further down. Oh well, can’t afford mods…
It was inevitable when they shut down the forums. They can't be bothered with moderating user interactions.
- It's surprising YouTube still has them given how notoriously bad they are.
  
  Youtube just allows the bots to flow freely. I will get anti Biden/west spam even on funny cat videos.
Apparently they were getting called out for using a LLM on the new Shikanoko anime instead of hiring a translator.
- That would explain the lack of pun explanations. Fansubs wouldnʼt be so lax.
- Holy shit. I knew CR were bad in terms of how they treated translators (source: I applied there), but holy fucking hell.
- There was also something of a flame war going on in one of the new sexy gay boy animes, twilight out of focus I think
Instead of employing moderators, they just nuke everything from orbit. Smooth move, ex-lax.
This is a shame... Reading the comments after I watched an episode was part of the experience for me.
- “This show is hot garbage. See you all here next week!”
- Same for me on allanime.to.
And they wonder why anime is pirated so much. Even the shittiest pirate site is a better experience to use than anything paid.
- Indeed. Because of this change, I already cancelled the auto renew of my subscription and I started looking back at the high seas.
  
  Are the comments really that important? The only time I ever went in them was recently to report the trolls wishing people HIV in the twilight out of focus comments
A reminder that the high seas are always there
- So weird, I'm old, but I still remember when Crunchyroll was part of the High Seas. It still throws me for a loop every once in awhile that it's become a legitimate streaming service.
  
  It becoming legit was a fucking mistake. It only became a legal option in what...2012 or something?
- And are better than Crunchyroll has ever been, if we're being real.
  
  Absolutely.
I'm sure they did this to avoid criticism and to also stop users from telling others about "unofficial" watching sites in the comments ("harmful" content)
There were comments?
- On the desktop version. Never saw on mobile.
  
  They're also very much present on the app
reminds me to EGS that does not want to be critized
No interact! Only consume!
- So piracy?
  
  Exactly!
  
  Hey I'm not going to tell you not to.
If you don’t want to moderate shit, why implement it in the first place? Like anime fans are known for being universally civil on the internet. What were they thinking?
- They probably did moderate..... But Sony doesn't want to have to expense (remember they own Crunchyroll now) of this so they're cutting it off
  
  Makes sense.
- They didn't. Comments were part of the original IP.
- Most of the comments I saw on the site edit: ... whoops grazed the button to submit the comment.
  
  Anyway, they were typically civil. The most uncivil things I saw were in the reviews where people would be complaining about people giving a show 1 star in other reviews.
- When comments started, Sony did not own Crunchyroll. They inherited the feature.
Its the same thing with "journalism" sites that also removed the comment function on articles. Its a two fold problem-solver for a business:

You get to delete all the criticism off your site

You don't have to pay anyone to moderate the comments
Honestly, I think this is fine. In my experience the episode comments on Crunchyroll were 50% simple reactions, 25% irrelevant memes, and 25% spoilers of future events. Other platforms like Lemmy and MAL are better suited for discussion.

The presence comments did add a sense of community though, and now the episode pages feel a bit lonely.
BAKA
This is like your favorite bar removing all seating and converting itself into a vending machine with “NO LOITERING” signs plastered everywhere.

Edit: I cancelled my 7.99 USD/month subscription. It's not a big signal, but it's the only one I have that matters to SONY, the near-monopoly that owns the concern. Half the enjoyment I got was in seeing the immediate reactions of others to an episode. Now, without comments or reviews, I can't even pretend that I'm not watching these shows alone. What's the point of enjoying a show if you can't talk about it with others?

48 comments