I totally get why people are upset by this and respect that. To provide the opposite perspective though, I've used Crunchyroll for many years and don't think I've ever used the comment section....
I totally get why people are upset by this and respect that. To provide the opposite perspective though, I've used Crunchyroll for many years and don't think I've ever used the comment section. I'm not aware of there being any sort of real community features, so I'd expect it to just be episode-by-episode shitposting, memes, flame wars, spam, and review bombing.
Even if it didn't save any money I'd absolutely make the same call just to reduce technical scope and reallocate staff to less stressful marketing or communications roles with higher returns. It seems like a whole lot of work for very little payoff.
Same. I've perused the comments, but rarely did I engage with anyone. Idk, if I wanted to discuss or find information about a show I was watching, I'd just go to the appropriate subreddit. The...
Same. I've perused the comments, but rarely did I engage with anyone. Idk, if I wanted to discuss or find information about a show I was watching, I'd just go to the appropriate subreddit. The comments I've seen on Crunchyroll were often not that interesting. Though they could be informative.
I also don't need or want things to be centralized. There's another post here on Tildes about Spotify trying to become or becoming a social media platform. And when I read that, I thought, "great, more centralization of the Internet, just what we need." To me, there's nothing wrong with having the shows on Crunchyroll, but then the discussion on reddit, Tildes, Discord, some random anime forum, wherever.
I see the convenience of having things in one place. But I feel like we've seen the issues with such centralization on the Internet lately. So I don't see this as the worst thing in the world.
I really don't understand this. You don't want centralization of discussion, but instead of each individual site having a comment section you want all commentary to be on some central discussion...
I also don't need or want things to be centralized. There's another post here on Tildes about Spotify trying to become or becoming a social media platform. And when I read that, I thought, "great, more centralization of the Internet, just what we need." To me, there's nothing wrong with having the shows on Crunchyroll, but then the discussion on reddit, Tildes, Discord, some random anime forum, wherever.
I really don't understand this. You don't want centralization of discussion, but instead of each individual site having a comment section you want all commentary to be on some central discussion aggregator, whether that be Tildes, reddit, or a set of forums.
I want discussion to happen on sites and services designed to facilitate productive, well moderated discussions. And I want media to be hosted on services designed to serve media. I don’t think...
I want discussion to happen on sites and services designed to facilitate productive, well moderated discussions. And I want media to be hosted on services designed to serve media. I don’t think these two skill sets have much to do with each other, and hosting a social platform is actually a colossal money sink at the scale CrunchyRoll operates at, so it can never be any good as there is no incentive to make it good.
It’s better if teams can focus on what they’re good at and commit to interoperating with other products and services that focus on what they’re good at. Instead you have megalomaniacs trying to use their control over the one thing they’re good at to then force people to make do with their shitty implementations of things others do better. That’s how you get Microsoft Teams (and, TBH, a lot of Microsoft stuff).
Even streaming services I’m a bit annoyed with because I feel like the skill set of producing and greenlighting content is profoundly different from the skill set around having a good video player and network infrastructure. It’s frustrating that to watch HBO content I have to make do with their trash ass app. I’d rather just buy a streaming video player and just plug into a bunch of content delivery services that all operate with each other. Let the companies run by lawyers and producers do their lawyer producer thing and let the tech people do the tech things.
And I understand that, I do, you're pressing for discussion to happen on those platforms designed for it. But that is centralisation - individual sites offloading their commentary and discussion...
And I understand that, I do, you're pressing for discussion to happen on those platforms designed for it. But that is centralisation - individual sites offloading their commentary and discussion boards onto a handful of big platforms that collectively serve all online public discourse.
It’s more like segregation of functions to the companies that are best suited to doing them. Some of them might consolidate into a handful of big platforms, but I think in many cases you’d...
It’s more like segregation of functions to the companies that are best suited to doing them. Some of them might consolidate into a handful of big platforms, but I think in many cases you’d actually get a lot more players and groups involved.
Discussion forums have natural tendencies to consolidate due to network effects but I think syndication protocols, like ActivityPub, might, help solve this if we can get more people on board. The P.O.S.S.E. ideal can come back for posting long-form content. And then free-wheeling discussions like this can happen across a panoply of Slacks and Discords and group chats and small community forums like Tildes.
In the case of crunchyroll I totally understand as it is a streaming platform. As a bit of a tangent, I sometimes do think it is a loss with other platforms/websites where there is no way for...
In the case of crunchyroll I totally understand as it is a streaming platform.
As a bit of a tangent, I sometimes do think it is a loss with other platforms/websites where there is no way for users to interact directly even though they are heavily dependent on a community.
Dropout.tv is such an example, on a regular basis I see shorts and compilation videos blow up on YouTube because people are just itching to discuss episodes. Having that place on the platform would be a value add for me and probably other people as well.
Don't get me wrong, there are probably multiple (semi) valid reasons why they don't have comments under videos either. For starters dropout as a company is relatively small and it does take up extra manpower to moderate it all. Dropout isn't building the platform themselves, it is based on an offering from Vimeo and comments might not be a part of that or cost extra.
For some additional context, Dropout had an official Discord server where people discussed episodes and such, and they shut it down just over a month ago because it was becoming unmanageable and...
For some additional context, Dropout had an official Discord server where people discussed episodes and such, and they shut it down just over a month ago because it was becoming unmanageable and expensive to moderate it; as well as having some friction due to having creators and fans in the same space that sometimes limited discussion.
That's a shame to hear. Having said that a semi public big discord (or any chat for that matter) is quite a bit more difficult to moderate than a comment section or a forum is. Simply the short...
That's a shame to hear. Having said that a semi public big discord (or any chat for that matter) is quite a bit more difficult to moderate than a comment section or a forum is. Simply the short form fast moving nature of it all.
I feel that on a closed platform like dropout itself comments are even more manageable. I still can see why they don't go for comments though, like I said in my earlier comment.
Those game changer episode/shorts with the get in the comments lines... and what, there's no comments on the official place to watch a full episode? Similar to how I feel about Nebula. They at...
Those game changer episode/shorts with the get in the comments lines... and what, there's no comments on the official place to watch a full episode?
Similar to how I feel about Nebula. They at least have a fairly active subreddit for video discussion. But it would be nice to have some integrated comment section.
I think it's the limitations of the Vimeo platform dropout runs on more than the difficulty managing comments (since they do on YouTube) but YT also provides a lot of comment management tools and...
I think it's the limitations of the Vimeo platform dropout runs on more than the difficulty managing comments (since they do on YouTube) but YT also provides a lot of comment management tools and auto filters and such, if I understand correctly and Vimeo, even if they provided the option on their platform, wouldn't have those built in.
The Vimeo software it runs on in general feels like a product that is developed just far enough for it to be a viable product. There are a bunch of features that just aren't implemented that imho...
The Vimeo software it runs on in general feels like a product that is developed just far enough for it to be a viable product. There are a bunch of features that just aren't implemented that imho should be there. For example, setting for subtitles simply don't stick on desktop.
Not to mention the ridiculous amount of tracking it seems to ship with that can't really be turned off, it seems.
To be clear, this is not a criticism towards dropout for choosing the platform. As far as I am aware, there is no real other alternative unless you yourself want to develop and maintain the platform. Which is for a company like dropout simply isn't feasible.
Agreed, it's the only real non-YouTube option afaik and I'm mostly unimpressed. But most of the issues are Vimeo limitations from comments I've seen from Sam
Agreed, it's the only real non-YouTube option afaik and I'm mostly unimpressed. But most of the issues are Vimeo limitations from comments I've seen from Sam
The core problem is that Vimeo is not, and does not want to be, a youtube competitor. It wants to be a site for professionals to upload their high-quality demo reels. Unsurprisingly, youtube-ish...
The core problem is that Vimeo is not, and does not want to be, a youtube competitor. It wants to be a site for professionals to upload their high-quality demo reels. Unsurprisingly, youtube-ish features are a non-priority and aren't implemented.
I mean, I don't really want comments there but I would like to have some of the other regular bugs worked out a bit better. if they're going to sell a platform for other companies' streaming (I...
I mean, I don't really want comments there but I would like to have some of the other regular bugs worked out a bit better. if they're going to sell a platform for other companies' streaming (I think they're the infrastructure behind Patreon videos too, nebula or curiosity stream maybe?) it'd be nice if they actually, like, did that well.
Yeah, when I see a news post from a big site and go to the bottom to see a cesspool of unmoderated arguments, I always think how it really would cost them nothing to get rid of the comment...
Yeah, when I see a news post from a big site and go to the bottom to see a cesspool of unmoderated arguments, I always think how it really would cost them nothing to get rid of the comment section. Someone actually decided to do it? I cant really argue with that.
Seconded. There’s some stuff where I’m often like “where’s the harm in leaving it there” but any text box on the internet is a potential vector for malware, scams, disinformation, CSAM...
Seconded. There’s some stuff where I’m often like “where’s the harm in leaving it there” but any text box on the internet is a potential vector for malware, scams, disinformation, CSAM distribution, and a whole bunch of other bad behavior. If you can’t commit the resources to do it right the most responsible thing is to not do it at all.
I support the removal of harmful messages. But removing all user content is ridiculous. This seems like a cost cutting measure. Can't afford proper moderation and less features to support. Whether...
I support the removal of harmful messages. But removing all user content is ridiculous. This seems like a cost cutting measure. Can't afford proper moderation and less features to support.
Whether binging or watching week to week, I enjoy reading the comments. I like leaving them even if it doesn't get read. This is really disappointing to me. I hope they reverse this decision
Honestly, once a platform gets to a certain size, I think it's kind of impossible to adequately moderate it. Automated moderation and report systems can only catch so much, and they can be abused...
Honestly, once a platform gets to a certain size, I think it's kind of impossible to adequately moderate it. Automated moderation and report systems can only catch so much, and they can be abused pretty easily by malicious actors. I have no idea how many moderators would be needed to adequately investigate all the reports and content across Crunchyroll.
Hopefully it's a temporary measure while they figure out a better solution. Off the top of my head, they might be able to lock down comments for specific series if they get review-bombed, or add some "verified"/"veteran" status where you need to have left so many comments over X amount of time to review or comment on certain series. That could at least cut down on situations like the BL anime mentioned in the article.
They might have finally reached the point where they just deemed moderating the comments impractical though. The wording of the announcement doesn't give any indication it's temporary. I suspect they've been discussing this option for a while even before that new BL anime got review-bombed.
The example of saw was certainly shocking, but I'm curious how prevelant it was. Was there that many shows being review bombed or bombarded with hateful comment? If it's so bad that you had to...
The example of saw was certainly shocking, but I'm curious how prevelant it was. Was there that many shows being review bombed or bombarded with hateful comment? If it's so bad that you had to remove any form of user interaction, then that's really surprising to me
You would be surprised how much shit people will throw your way on online platforms. Let's put it like this, the worst parts of twitter and 4chan are what you can expect as steady stream as part...
You would be surprised how much shit people will throw your way on online platforms. Let's put it like this, the worst parts of twitter and 4chan are what you can expect as steady stream as part of the interactions on a platform.
Which a lot of people simply don't realize because they never have moderated something themselves.
I have an old Wordpress blog that I haven’t used in over a decade but that I never took down. It’s a no-name, nothing-important site that’s essentially lost for good among the millions of other...
I have an old Wordpress blog that I haven’t used in over a decade but that I never took down. It’s a no-name, nothing-important site that’s essentially lost for good among the millions of other well-intentioned but now-abandoned blogs from the 00s.
I do still get emails if someone leaves a comment though, and very occasionally, maybe once every other year, I’ll get a notification that someone has left one. These are always spam. Bots are the only traffic this site is getting these days.
Except for one time, where I got the email for a new comment, and I was surprised to see the words of an actual human along with it instead of just blogspam nonsense.
Unfortunately, the comment was uncompromisingly negative. The person openly shit-talked me and my no-name blog. They’d ended up on it because I’d made a cheeky pop culture reference in my writing, and they wanted to let me know that I was garbage for “stealing” that. How they even found the site, I’ll never know — there’s no way it comes up highly in any search result. It doesn’t even have its own domain. It’s just one of the millions of free blogs made and hosted directly on Wordpress.
I also didn’t write anything inflammatory either that would have prompted the hostility — the post was about as mundane as you can get. I wouldn’t even remember what it was about if it weren’t for that comment that had me re-reading what I wrote, wondering if I’d accidentally provoked something. The blog wasn’t ever meant to have a lot of viewers in the first place — it was pretty much a public journal that my friends could use to keep tabs on me with.
The whole event had a sort of profound and Black Mirror-esque sadness for me. This person went out of their way to post an unnecessarily mean, nasty comment on a clearly abandoned personal blog that was written over 10 years ago. They knew that no one was likely to read it — not even me — because the site is so old and has zero traffic. Normally I’d feel bad about receiving a comment like that, but in reflection, I mostly feel bad for the person posting it — not in a patronizing way but in an empathetic way.
I think we all know what it feels like to be angry on the internet and how that can cloud our judgments and make us act against our best interests and better natures. Anger always feels justified in the moment, and there’s legitimately a satisfying release to getting it off your chest.
There’s also a threshold that anger has to cross to be worthwhile though, because anger has both social and personal costs to it. The modern internet has clearly adjusted that threshold in its favor, getting and keeping people angry and encouraging them to express it at every turn. The commenter who left the nasty comment on my blog felt like a product of that environment: one that pushes anger as a default paradigm of engagement rather than something to be wielded carefully and with respect for its power.
They undoubtedly felt their anger was necessary enough to take the time to leave an eviscerating comment; meanwhile, I felt profoundly sad that someone else’s time and efforts were so unnecessarily consumed by anger in the first place.
On a simple normal blog post.
From over 10 years ago.
This comment is essentially a really long way to affirm your point: it’s genuinely surprising how much shit people throw (and how comfortably they do it) on online platforms.
I agree. This decision seems to be a case where the review bomb made them decide to follow through with a plan that's been on the shelf for a while more so than a kneejerk that will flip-flop and...
I suspect they've been discussing this option for a while even before that new BL anime got review-bombed.
I agree. This decision seems to be a case where the review bomb made them decide to follow through with a plan that's been on the shelf for a while more so than a kneejerk that will flip-flop and backpedal.
I'd rather have no comments than a cesspit of spam and flame wars. If adequately moderating your community is outside your scope then just don't have the feature. With LLMs only getting better and...
I'd rather have no comments than a cesspit of spam and flame wars. If adequately moderating your community is outside your scope then just don't have the feature.
With LLMs only getting better and cheaper to run, I expect poorly or unmoderated communities to only get worse.
It's funny that you would say that. As LLMs actually are pretty okay at doing moderation to an adequate level. I did experiment with it a few months ago for a history related discord. The main...
With LLMs only getting better and cheaper to run, I expect poorly or unmoderated communities to only get worse.
It's funny that you would say that. As LLMs actually are pretty okay at doing moderation to an adequate level. I did experiment with it a few months ago for a history related discord. The main issue for me was the cost of it, but for a company it would be comparatively speaking very cheap compared to having 24/7 moderation.
There are not many areas where I think LLMs currently truly add value. But if there is any, it would be for comment sections that are currently poorly or not moderated.
I believe that comment sections are going to be overrun with LLM-generated content, and LLMs don't seem particularly good at catching that. The dark forest internet may yet become real.
I believe that comment sections are going to be overrun with LLM-generated content, and LLMs don't seem particularly good at catching that. The dark forest internet may yet become real.
I definitely understand the desire to remove the ability to comment from a web site...keeping spam off a simple blog is an Sisyphean chore at best, to say nothing of the nasty things people write...
I definitely understand the desire to remove the ability to comment from a web site...keeping spam off a simple blog is an Sisyphean chore at best, to say nothing of the nasty things people write on higher traffic sites. It is, however, incredibly sad to watch the slow erosion of the social nature of the 2000s-era Web.
Things were more social before the rise of social networking sites: people had personal blogs, comments, blogrolls of sites they read and commented on (trackbacks/pingbacks were a cool thing too). Larger publications were all adding comments...and now they've mostly went away or become tiresome to even look at.
I have pondered whether this is something machine learning or even simple Bayesian filters would help with: why not train a "spam filter" on some comments scraped from Fox News or Breitbart or such, and automatically nuke ones it matches? An API that can successfully banish those types to the shadow realm would be well worth paying for.
This is a really good point. I guess part of my disappointment comes from growing up in that era of the internet. In some ways internet socializing has grown, but shrunk in others This is a good...
... It is, however, incredibly sad to watch the slow erosion of the social nature of the 2000s-era Web.
Things were more social before the rise of social networking sites: people had personal blogs, comments, blogrolls of sites they read and commented on (trackbacks/pingbacks were a cool thing too). Larger publications were all adding comments...and now they've mostly went away or become tiresome to even look at.
This is a really good point. I guess part of my disappointment comes from growing up in that era of the internet. In some ways internet socializing has grown, but shrunk in others
I have pondered whether this is something machine learning or even simple Bayesian filters would help with: why not train a "spam filter" on some comments scraped from Fox News or Breitbart or such, and automatically nuke ones it matches? An API that can successfully banish those types to the shadow realm would be well worth paying for.
This is a good idea. Done right, a service like this could do well. Offer an auto-filter or auto-flagging setting. It could cut down moderation costs.
It's something a lot of journalistic websites did throughout the 2010's. Some used to be full on forums, and now you'd be lucky if they take the time to impliment Disqus or something. The biggest...
It's something a lot of journalistic websites did throughout the 2010's. Some used to be full on forums, and now you'd be lucky if they take the time to impliment Disqus or something.
The biggest news places still have comments, but it's a dying breed, especially when you can just link your news pages to Twitter and let Musk deal with the toxicity (spoilers: he does not in fact deal with the toxicity. Quite the contrary)
Some people might not agree that it is a streaming service, but Youtube does. Then again, Youtube can offload a bunch of moderation to the individual channel owners.
Some people might not agree that it is a streaming service, but Youtube does. Then again, Youtube can offload a bunch of moderation to the individual channel owners.
They can. I just don't particularly appreciate the fake tears. They barely tried with the "annoucnement" here, tucked away in a FAQ: Sure, I guess removing the community by default creates a safe...
They can. I just don't particularly appreciate the fake tears. They barely tried with the "annoucnement" here, tucked away in a FAQ:
we prioritize creating a safe and respectful community environment.
Sure, I guess removing the community by default creates a safe and respectful environment. Or perhaps an unsafe and unrespectful one. Guess it's a glass half full/empty question to answer. If they just said "we don't want to pay for moderation and engagement was too low" I'd completely respect the decision
The user ratings system will, however, remain allowing you to express your opinions through star ratings.
again, "we know ratings help engage viewers and drive them towards our popular content". No, instead we're pretending that choosing between 1-5 stars is an adequate form of expression of an artistic medium. And implying it builds community given the previous sentence.
Businesses were never genuine, but I'm just exhausted from how lazy they've gotten with their false platitudes lately. I can appreciate a good spin, knowing some PR person spent hours balancing their words carefully to be as inoffensive as possible, or try to make a bad hand look good. This is just pitiful.
It's an anime streaming website. Their average customer is 15 years old. It's about as much as I expect from crunchy and how much you can expect for that audience. I'm the opposite, showing your...
It's an anime streaming website. Their average customer is 15 years old. It's about as much as I expect from crunchy and how much you can expect for that audience.
I'm the opposite, showing your hand means the disdain is obvious rather than obfuscated. Businesses are making it exceedingly clear there's no respect for the customer, and I'd rather people see that clearly than believe in the spin doctor's well wrapped platitudes.
Maybe 10 years ago that'd be the case. Pretty sure that demographic is aging just like every other "new media" medium. I don't think we disagree. I also don't think we'll disagree that PR for any...
Their average customer is 15 years old
Maybe 10 years ago that'd be the case. Pretty sure that demographic is aging just like every other "new media" medium.
Businesses are making it exceedingly clear there's no respect for the customer, and I'd rather people see that clearly than believe in the spin doctor's well wrapped platitudes.
I don't think we disagree. I also don't think we'll disagree that PR for any non-indie sized company would ever approve of the "we like money and need to make more money" honesty approach.
I suppose I'm a craftsman first and foremost; I'm definitely the type of person that can put up with the most apathetic food server and I'd still focus on the taste of the food over the quality of the service. I'm probably doing the same here. If you're gonna put a spin on it, at least do it right.
Comment moderation is a thankless business. People don’t really come to a site to read its comments, so it doesn’t drive business. But then you need human and machine moderators which can get...
Comment moderation is a thankless business. People don’t really come to a site to read its comments, so it doesn’t drive business.
But then you need human and machine moderators which can get quite expensive.
If you over-moderate, people accuse you of censorship, etc.
If you under-moderate, people accuse you of allowing abuse or worse profiting from it.
I'm not familiar with Crunchyroll's, but in my experience comment sections/forums on anime-related content can often be extremely toxic. Some anime fans sure can hate the thing they profess to...
I'm not familiar with Crunchyroll's, but in my experience comment sections/forums on anime-related content can often be extremely toxic. Some anime fans sure can hate the thing they profess to love. They seem miserable all the damn time.
I don't blame Crunchyroll for not wanting to deal with the whole thing if it brings them less value than they gain from it.
This is a societal problem though. I don't think it can ever be fixed with moderation. Moderation can exclude people from a community, but they still exist and are out there, growing more resentful and more eager to unload their vitriol on any bad social network or unmoderated comment section they can find.
I would suggest that we could start by better and more closely guiding younger people in their earlier interactions with the internet, instead of just handing them a tablet without explaining to them that all the people they're going to see in the next two days telling them to kill themselves are not behaving acceptably.
This really must be a generational thing because I have very little interest in following comment sections and chats of randos like this. As far back as I can remember comments on things like...
This really must be a generational thing because I have very little interest in following comment sections and chats of randos like this. As far back as I can remember comments on things like YouTube videos or newspaper articles, where it’s all random transient traffic instead of a community of posters, were known for being cesspits of racist shitheads and unhinged conspiracy loons. Much of this has been absorbed into Facebook as newspapers gave up on cultivating audiences and chased social media traffic instead.
I remember way way back in the aughts some blogger I followed wrote about watching a TV show with his daughter that she really enjoyed and she asked him how to like it. He had to explain to her that it’s a TV show, it just airs and you don’t interact with it. She was confused and he observed that there’s gonna be a generational shift with her generation where they simply won’t grok “passive” media anymore or why you would engage with something without sharing or discussing it.
He was right! His daughter is probably in her 20s by now, right in the target age demo for CrunchyRoll. I realize this ends up sounding like me being an old man, but I really feel like we’d all be mentally and emotionally healthier if we learned to just enjoy observing things instead of reacting or commenting on them. You get a better sense of yourself, who you are, and what you like (and more interesting and varied perspectives) if you take time to sit with stuff before turning it into a gamified social thing. Writing things up as well thought out reviews or essays is going to be a better and more useful take than hastily dashing off a random take.
Anyway, I’m gonna go untie this onion from my belt as it seems it’s no longer the style at this time.
I don't expect there to necessarily be a like button, but I do expect that there's a URL that I can share :-) How else am I going to tell people what I like? It's a bad habit, starting on a Tildes...
I don't expect there to necessarily be a like button, but I do expect that there's a URL that I can share :-) How else am I going to tell people what I like?
It's a bad habit, starting on a Tildes topic before I even got to the end of the article.
Oh yeah the design trend of obfuscating URLs and site maps and basically anything that lets people spatially orient themselves to where they are or direct others there has been a huge regression...
Oh yeah the design trend of obfuscating URLs and site maps and basically anything that lets people spatially orient themselves to where they are or direct others there has been a huge regression in the usability of computers.
I don’t know anything about Crunchyroll, but in the early days of the Internet, lots of newspapers had comment sections and they turned bad, and eventually they got rid of them. People found other...
I don’t know anything about Crunchyroll, but in the early days of the Internet, lots of newspapers had comment sections and they turned bad, and eventually they got rid of them. People found other forums like Twitter and Reddit, and conversations happened there instead. So from a distance, it seems like a cycle of life thing? But maybe someone could explain what I missed.
Comment sections don't just "turn bad", the reason they turn bad is when there is little to no moderation. Then at a certain point they become so toxic that you either invest a lot of time and...
But maybe someone could explain what I missed
Comment sections don't just "turn bad", the reason they turn bad is when there is little to no moderation. Then at a certain point they become so toxic that you either invest a lot of time and effort in cleaning them up, getting rid of the bad actors, etc, etc. Or, you do the cost saving thing and throw out the baby with the bad water by removing comments.
Yes, there's more detail I glossed over :) Another thing that happens sometimes is staff turnover. The people who got the newspaper on the Internet were enthusiasts, excited about the potential of...
Yes, there's more detail I glossed over :)
Another thing that happens sometimes is staff turnover. The people who got the newspaper on the Internet were enthusiasts, excited about the potential of reaching out to their readers using the World Wide Web. Eventually they left. Maybe there's nobody else on staff who is enthusiastic about it. A feature that takes work and has no internal advocate tends to get cut.
Other websites might be more persistent because hosting forums is closer to their main mission, though the whole site might shut down eventually or evolve into something else.
In the long run, websites are mostly transient, because there are organizations behind them and most organizations don't last. There are important exceptions, though.
I actually love this. I think most sites where discussion is not a key aspect of the platform should do the same. The less comment sections where they're unnecessary, the better. Plenty of sites...
I actually love this. I think most sites where discussion is not a key aspect of the platform should do the same. The less comment sections where they're unnecessary, the better. Plenty of sites where the comment sections are absolutely useless
Not every website or platform needs to be social. Not every website or platform needs to accommodate drive-by ignorance. We'll be better off when companies get past the idea of trying to turn every product or service into a social one.
I'm kind of sad about this. I always liked looking at comments. People would point out small details that I missed, or help to explain/theorize when an episode was confusing. I rarely, if ever saw...
I'm kind of sad about this. I always liked looking at comments. People would point out small details that I missed, or help to explain/theorize when an episode was confusing. I rarely, if ever saw someone say anything bad. This might be biased in that I tended to watch more niche Slice of Life/Drama shows, rather than the big popular action shows.
I watch some of the big shows and also rarely saw really hateful comments. Plenty of criticisms of CR or the episode, but rarely anything truly hateful. I really enjoyed reading the comments. Even...
I watch some of the big shows and also rarely saw really hateful comments. Plenty of criticisms of CR or the episode, but rarely anything truly hateful. I really enjoyed reading the comments. Even the simple ones talking about how they liked the epsiode or specific moments/lines.
I often found that a vast majority of those comments were made by people trying to pretend to be smart by noticing things that aren't really obvious unless you've read ahead in the source...
People would point out small details that I missed, or help to explain/theorize when an episode was confusing.
I often found that a vast majority of those comments were made by people trying to pretend to be smart by noticing things that aren't really obvious unless you've read ahead in the source material. Especially since those sorts of comments were so much rarer in anime original shows. So really, people pointing out those details weren't much more than thinly veiled spoilers.
Many years ago when I was still using Crunchyroll, I went out of my way to write a Greasemonkey userscript to block the comments section. It was an instant improvement of my experience because all...
Many years ago when I was still using Crunchyroll, I went out of my way to write a Greasemonkey userscript to block the comments section. It was an instant improvement of my experience because all of the comments were not only annoying, but also useless. I doubt I missed anything significant.
A shame to hear. The only time I went to the comments was when I was watching Gundam ZZ, which has this odd problem of one or two lines being unsubtitled per episode, and generally there was a...
A shame to hear. The only time I went to the comments was when I was watching Gundam ZZ, which has this odd problem of one or two lines being unsubtitled per episode, and generally there was a comment filling those in. It'll suck that people who watch from now on won't have that option.
Their comment section has its share of dbags, but few are outright toxic. For the most part they're useful and can be entertaining. If you can't handle the comments, you probably can't handle the...
Their comment section has its share of dbags, but few are outright toxic. For the most part they're useful and can be entertaining. If you can't handle the comments, you probably can't handle the anime (i.e. shows with more fan service tend to have worse comments). I'm betting Sony did this just to save a few dimes. This will suck without the peanut gallery to provide easy answers, let me know if recaps are worth watching or that there's more at the end. Q_Q
Anime has an issue of having things that aren't easy to understand or that get confusing and the comment section often sheds light on them. Be it weird sayings, untranslated text/words or something that can only be understood by reading the light novel.
I'm wondering if this is going to start to become a thing with a lot of platforms. Youtube is currently experiencing an insane influx of harmful / outright illegal comments and not every creator...
I'm wondering if this is going to start to become a thing with a lot of platforms. Youtube is currently experiencing an insane influx of harmful / outright illegal comments and not every creator can keep up with it. It's somehow getting easier for the people creating these bots to get around security measures like 2FA, and AI can churn out so much spam, I'm not sure what these websites can do about it.
On one hand, I do like reading comments from time to time, but on the other, I end up reading some of the most braindead or purposefully inflamatory things ever written in comment sections on big name websites. So I'm not really sure how to feel about more platforms potentially moving away from the more social aspects of their services.
I feel like there is plenty of seperate spaces to discuss content you enjoy, and having that seperation might even help create friction for these bot creators from even bothering in the first place.
I can't tell if this was written by an AI or just poorly edited. Not a strong showing by IGN for the opening paragraph of a news article, either way.
Crunchyroll announced it has disabled the comment section from its anime and news posts, saying it has axed the comment section for its anime episodes and news posts.
I can't tell if this was written by an AI or just poorly edited. Not a strong showing by IGN for the opening paragraph of a news article, either way.
I totally get why people are upset by this and respect that. To provide the opposite perspective though, I've used Crunchyroll for many years and don't think I've ever used the comment section. I'm not aware of there being any sort of real community features, so I'd expect it to just be episode-by-episode shitposting, memes, flame wars, spam, and review bombing.
Even if it didn't save any money I'd absolutely make the same call just to reduce technical scope and reallocate staff to less stressful marketing or communications roles with higher returns. It seems like a whole lot of work for very little payoff.
Same. I've perused the comments, but rarely did I engage with anyone. Idk, if I wanted to discuss or find information about a show I was watching, I'd just go to the appropriate subreddit. The comments I've seen on Crunchyroll were often not that interesting. Though they could be informative.
I also don't need or want things to be centralized. There's another post here on Tildes about Spotify trying to become or becoming a social media platform. And when I read that, I thought, "great, more centralization of the Internet, just what we need." To me, there's nothing wrong with having the shows on Crunchyroll, but then the discussion on reddit, Tildes, Discord, some random anime forum, wherever.
I see the convenience of having things in one place. But I feel like we've seen the issues with such centralization on the Internet lately. So I don't see this as the worst thing in the world.
I really don't understand this. You don't want centralization of discussion, but instead of each individual site having a comment section you want all commentary to be on some central discussion aggregator, whether that be Tildes, reddit, or a set of forums.
I want discussion to happen on sites and services designed to facilitate productive, well moderated discussions. And I want media to be hosted on services designed to serve media. I don’t think these two skill sets have much to do with each other, and hosting a social platform is actually a colossal money sink at the scale CrunchyRoll operates at, so it can never be any good as there is no incentive to make it good.
It’s better if teams can focus on what they’re good at and commit to interoperating with other products and services that focus on what they’re good at. Instead you have megalomaniacs trying to use their control over the one thing they’re good at to then force people to make do with their shitty implementations of things others do better. That’s how you get Microsoft Teams (and, TBH, a lot of Microsoft stuff).
Even streaming services I’m a bit annoyed with because I feel like the skill set of producing and greenlighting content is profoundly different from the skill set around having a good video player and network infrastructure. It’s frustrating that to watch HBO content I have to make do with their trash ass app. I’d rather just buy a streaming video player and just plug into a bunch of content delivery services that all operate with each other. Let the companies run by lawyers and producers do their lawyer producer thing and let the tech people do the tech things.
And I understand that, I do, you're pressing for discussion to happen on those platforms designed for it. But that is centralisation - individual sites offloading their commentary and discussion boards onto a handful of big platforms that collectively serve all online public discourse.
It’s more like segregation of functions to the companies that are best suited to doing them. Some of them might consolidate into a handful of big platforms, but I think in many cases you’d actually get a lot more players and groups involved.
Discussion forums have natural tendencies to consolidate due to network effects but I think syndication protocols, like ActivityPub, might, help solve this if we can get more people on board. The P.O.S.S.E. ideal can come back for posting long-form content. And then free-wheeling discussions like this can happen across a panoply of Slacks and Discords and group chats and small community forums like Tildes.
In the case of crunchyroll I totally understand as it is a streaming platform.
As a bit of a tangent, I sometimes do think it is a loss with other platforms/websites where there is no way for users to interact directly even though they are heavily dependent on a community.
Dropout.tv is such an example, on a regular basis I see shorts and compilation videos blow up on YouTube because people are just itching to discuss episodes. Having that place on the platform would be a value add for me and probably other people as well.
Don't get me wrong, there are probably multiple (semi) valid reasons why they don't have comments under videos either. For starters dropout as a company is relatively small and it does take up extra manpower to moderate it all. Dropout isn't building the platform themselves, it is based on an offering from Vimeo and comments might not be a part of that or cost extra.
For some additional context, Dropout had an official Discord server where people discussed episodes and such, and they shut it down just over a month ago because it was becoming unmanageable and expensive to moderate it; as well as having some friction due to having creators and fans in the same space that sometimes limited discussion.
That's a shame to hear. Having said that a semi public big discord (or any chat for that matter) is quite a bit more difficult to moderate than a comment section or a forum is. Simply the short form fast moving nature of it all.
I feel that on a closed platform like dropout itself comments are even more manageable. I still can see why they don't go for comments though, like I said in my earlier comment.
Those game changer episode/shorts with the get in the comments lines... and what, there's no comments on the official place to watch a full episode?
Similar to how I feel about Nebula. They at least have a fairly active subreddit for video discussion. But it would be nice to have some integrated comment section.
Yeah nebula feels even more
deadlike a ghost town to me. It having a subreddit doesn't really help as I said goodbye to it over a year ago.I think it's the limitations of the Vimeo platform dropout runs on more than the difficulty managing comments (since they do on YouTube) but YT also provides a lot of comment management tools and auto filters and such, if I understand correctly and Vimeo, even if they provided the option on their platform, wouldn't have those built in.
The Vimeo software it runs on in general feels like a product that is developed just far enough for it to be a viable product. There are a bunch of features that just aren't implemented that imho should be there. For example, setting for subtitles simply don't stick on desktop.
Not to mention the ridiculous amount of tracking it seems to ship with that can't really be turned off, it seems.
To be clear, this is not a criticism towards dropout for choosing the platform. As far as I am aware, there is no real other alternative unless you yourself want to develop and maintain the platform. Which is for a company like dropout simply isn't feasible.
Agreed, it's the only real non-YouTube option afaik and I'm mostly unimpressed. But most of the issues are Vimeo limitations from comments I've seen from Sam
The core problem is that Vimeo is not, and does not want to be, a youtube competitor. It wants to be a site for professionals to upload their high-quality demo reels. Unsurprisingly, youtube-ish features are a non-priority and aren't implemented.
I mean, I don't really want comments there but I would like to have some of the other regular bugs worked out a bit better. if they're going to sell a platform for other companies' streaming (I think they're the infrastructure behind Patreon videos too, nebula or curiosity stream maybe?) it'd be nice if they actually, like, did that well.
Yeah, when I see a news post from a big site and go to the bottom to see a cesspool of unmoderated arguments, I always think how it really would cost them nothing to get rid of the comment section. Someone actually decided to do it? I cant really argue with that.
Seconded. There’s some stuff where I’m often like “where’s the harm in leaving it there” but any text box on the internet is a potential vector for malware, scams, disinformation, CSAM distribution, and a whole bunch of other bad behavior. If you can’t commit the resources to do it right the most responsible thing is to not do it at all.
This is the kind of thinking that got the IMDb comment boards removed!
Never forget!
I support the removal of harmful messages. But removing all user content is ridiculous. This seems like a cost cutting measure. Can't afford proper moderation and less features to support.
Whether binging or watching week to week, I enjoy reading the comments. I like leaving them even if it doesn't get read. This is really disappointing to me. I hope they reverse this decision
Crunchyroll message
Honestly, once a platform gets to a certain size, I think it's kind of impossible to adequately moderate it. Automated moderation and report systems can only catch so much, and they can be abused pretty easily by malicious actors. I have no idea how many moderators would be needed to adequately investigate all the reports and content across Crunchyroll.
Hopefully it's a temporary measure while they figure out a better solution. Off the top of my head, they might be able to lock down comments for specific series if they get review-bombed, or add some "verified"/"veteran" status where you need to have left so many comments over X amount of time to review or comment on certain series. That could at least cut down on situations like the BL anime mentioned in the article.
They might have finally reached the point where they just deemed moderating the comments impractical though. The wording of the announcement doesn't give any indication it's temporary. I suspect they've been discussing this option for a while even before that new BL anime got review-bombed.
The example of saw was certainly shocking, but I'm curious how prevelant it was. Was there that many shows being review bombed or bombarded with hateful comment? If it's so bad that you had to remove any form of user interaction, then that's really surprising to me
You would be surprised how much shit people will throw your way on online platforms. Let's put it like this, the worst parts of twitter and 4chan are what you can expect as steady stream as part of the interactions on a platform.
Which a lot of people simply don't realize because they never have moderated something themselves.
I have an old Wordpress blog that I haven’t used in over a decade but that I never took down. It’s a no-name, nothing-important site that’s essentially lost for good among the millions of other well-intentioned but now-abandoned blogs from the 00s.
I do still get emails if someone leaves a comment though, and very occasionally, maybe once every other year, I’ll get a notification that someone has left one. These are always spam. Bots are the only traffic this site is getting these days.
Except for one time, where I got the email for a new comment, and I was surprised to see the words of an actual human along with it instead of just blogspam nonsense.
Unfortunately, the comment was uncompromisingly negative. The person openly shit-talked me and my no-name blog. They’d ended up on it because I’d made a cheeky pop culture reference in my writing, and they wanted to let me know that I was garbage for “stealing” that. How they even found the site, I’ll never know — there’s no way it comes up highly in any search result. It doesn’t even have its own domain. It’s just one of the millions of free blogs made and hosted directly on Wordpress.
I also didn’t write anything inflammatory either that would have prompted the hostility — the post was about as mundane as you can get. I wouldn’t even remember what it was about if it weren’t for that comment that had me re-reading what I wrote, wondering if I’d accidentally provoked something. The blog wasn’t ever meant to have a lot of viewers in the first place — it was pretty much a public journal that my friends could use to keep tabs on me with.
The whole event had a sort of profound and Black Mirror-esque sadness for me. This person went out of their way to post an unnecessarily mean, nasty comment on a clearly abandoned personal blog that was written over 10 years ago. They knew that no one was likely to read it — not even me — because the site is so old and has zero traffic. Normally I’d feel bad about receiving a comment like that, but in reflection, I mostly feel bad for the person posting it — not in a patronizing way but in an empathetic way.
I think we all know what it feels like to be angry on the internet and how that can cloud our judgments and make us act against our best interests and better natures. Anger always feels justified in the moment, and there’s legitimately a satisfying release to getting it off your chest.
There’s also a threshold that anger has to cross to be worthwhile though, because anger has both social and personal costs to it. The modern internet has clearly adjusted that threshold in its favor, getting and keeping people angry and encouraging them to express it at every turn. The commenter who left the nasty comment on my blog felt like a product of that environment: one that pushes anger as a default paradigm of engagement rather than something to be wielded carefully and with respect for its power.
They undoubtedly felt their anger was necessary enough to take the time to leave an eviscerating comment; meanwhile, I felt profoundly sad that someone else’s time and efforts were so unnecessarily consumed by anger in the first place.
On a simple normal blog post.
From over 10 years ago.
This comment is essentially a really long way to affirm your point: it’s genuinely surprising how much shit people throw (and how comfortably they do it) on online platforms.
I agree. This decision seems to be a case where the review bomb made them decide to follow through with a plan that's been on the shelf for a while more so than a kneejerk that will flip-flop and backpedal.
I'd rather have no comments than a cesspit of spam and flame wars. If adequately moderating your community is outside your scope then just don't have the feature.
With LLMs only getting better and cheaper to run, I expect poorly or unmoderated communities to only get worse.
It's funny that you would say that. As LLMs actually are pretty okay at doing moderation to an adequate level. I did experiment with it a few months ago for a history related discord. The main issue for me was the cost of it, but for a company it would be comparatively speaking very cheap compared to having 24/7 moderation.
There are not many areas where I think LLMs currently truly add value. But if there is any, it would be for comment sections that are currently poorly or not moderated.
I believe that comment sections are going to be overrun with LLM-generated content, and LLMs don't seem particularly good at catching that. The dark forest internet may yet become real.
To be fair, non-LLMs are also not great at filtering out LLM-generated content.
I definitely understand the desire to remove the ability to comment from a web site...keeping spam off a simple blog is an Sisyphean chore at best, to say nothing of the nasty things people write on higher traffic sites. It is, however, incredibly sad to watch the slow erosion of the social nature of the 2000s-era Web.
Things were more social before the rise of social networking sites: people had personal blogs, comments, blogrolls of sites they read and commented on (trackbacks/pingbacks were a cool thing too). Larger publications were all adding comments...and now they've mostly went away or become tiresome to even look at.
I have pondered whether this is something machine learning or even simple Bayesian filters would help with: why not train a "spam filter" on some comments scraped from Fox News or Breitbart or such, and automatically nuke ones it matches? An API that can successfully banish those types to the shadow realm would be well worth paying for.
People are nothing if not resourceful in finding ways to say awful things that can pass an automated filter.
People will find novel ways to say awful things they'd detest IRL simply to have the joy of getting one over on the filter.
This is a really good point. I guess part of my disappointment comes from growing up in that era of the internet. In some ways internet socializing has grown, but shrunk in others
This is a good idea. Done right, a service like this could do well. Offer an auto-filter or auto-flagging setting. It could cut down moderation costs.
It's something a lot of journalistic websites did throughout the 2010's. Some used to be full on forums, and now you'd be lucky if they take the time to impliment Disqus or something.
The biggest news places still have comments, but it's a dying breed, especially when you can just link your news pages to Twitter and let Musk deal with the toxicity (spoilers: he does not in fact deal with the toxicity. Quite the contrary)
Some people might not agree that it is a streaming service, but Youtube does. Then again, Youtube can offload a bunch of moderation to the individual channel owners.
Smaller ones do. But it's irrelevant. A website can decide for themselves if they want to have comments or not.
They can. I just don't particularly appreciate the fake tears. They barely tried with the "annoucnement" here, tucked away in a FAQ:
Sure, I guess removing the community by default creates a safe and respectful environment. Or perhaps an unsafe and unrespectful one. Guess it's a glass half full/empty question to answer. If they just said "we don't want to pay for moderation and engagement was too low" I'd completely respect the decision
again, "we know ratings help engage viewers and drive them towards our popular content". No, instead we're pretending that choosing between 1-5 stars is an adequate form of expression of an artistic medium. And implying it builds community given the previous sentence.
Businesses were never genuine, but I'm just exhausted from how lazy they've gotten with their false platitudes lately. I can appreciate a good spin, knowing some PR person spent hours balancing their words carefully to be as inoffensive as possible, or try to make a bad hand look good. This is just pitiful.
It's an anime streaming website. Their average customer is 15 years old. It's about as much as I expect from crunchy and how much you can expect for that audience.
I'm the opposite, showing your hand means the disdain is obvious rather than obfuscated. Businesses are making it exceedingly clear there's no respect for the customer, and I'd rather people see that clearly than believe in the spin doctor's well wrapped platitudes.
Maybe 10 years ago that'd be the case. Pretty sure that demographic is aging just like every other "new media" medium.
I don't think we disagree. I also don't think we'll disagree that PR for any non-indie sized company would ever approve of the "we like money and need to make more money" honesty approach.
I suppose I'm a craftsman first and foremost; I'm definitely the type of person that can put up with the most apathetic food server and I'd still focus on the taste of the food over the quality of the service. I'm probably doing the same here. If you're gonna put a spin on it, at least do it right.
Comment moderation is a thankless business. People don’t really come to a site to read its comments, so it doesn’t drive business.
But then you need human and machine moderators which can get quite expensive.
If you over-moderate, people accuse you of censorship, etc.
If you under-moderate, people accuse you of allowing abuse or worse profiting from it.
Getting it just right is really, really hard.
I'm not familiar with Crunchyroll's, but in my experience comment sections/forums on anime-related content can often be extremely toxic. Some anime fans sure can hate the thing they profess to love. They seem miserable all the damn time.
I don't blame Crunchyroll for not wanting to deal with the whole thing if it brings them less value than they gain from it.
This is a societal problem though. I don't think it can ever be fixed with moderation. Moderation can exclude people from a community, but they still exist and are out there, growing more resentful and more eager to unload their vitriol on any bad social network or unmoderated comment section they can find.
I would suggest that we could start by better and more closely guiding younger people in their earlier interactions with the internet, instead of just handing them a tablet without explaining to them that all the people they're going to see in the next two days telling them to kill themselves are not behaving acceptably.
This really must be a generational thing because I have very little interest in following comment sections and chats of randos like this. As far back as I can remember comments on things like YouTube videos or newspaper articles, where it’s all random transient traffic instead of a community of posters, were known for being cesspits of racist shitheads and unhinged conspiracy loons. Much of this has been absorbed into Facebook as newspapers gave up on cultivating audiences and chased social media traffic instead.
I remember way way back in the aughts some blogger I followed wrote about watching a TV show with his daughter that she really enjoyed and she asked him how to like it. He had to explain to her that it’s a TV show, it just airs and you don’t interact with it. She was confused and he observed that there’s gonna be a generational shift with her generation where they simply won’t grok “passive” media anymore or why you would engage with something without sharing or discussing it.
He was right! His daughter is probably in her 20s by now, right in the target age demo for CrunchyRoll. I realize this ends up sounding like me being an old man, but I really feel like we’d all be mentally and emotionally healthier if we learned to just enjoy observing things instead of reacting or commenting on them. You get a better sense of yourself, who you are, and what you like (and more interesting and varied perspectives) if you take time to sit with stuff before turning it into a gamified social thing. Writing things up as well thought out reviews or essays is going to be a better and more useful take than hastily dashing off a random take.
Anyway, I’m gonna go untie this onion from my belt as it seems it’s no longer the style at this time.
I don't expect there to necessarily be a like button, but I do expect that there's a URL that I can share :-) How else am I going to tell people what I like?
It's a bad habit, starting on a Tildes topic before I even got to the end of the article.
Oh yeah the design trend of obfuscating URLs and site maps and basically anything that lets people spatially orient themselves to where they are or direct others there has been a huge regression in the usability of computers.
I don’t know anything about Crunchyroll, but in the early days of the Internet, lots of newspapers had comment sections and they turned bad, and eventually they got rid of them. People found other forums like Twitter and Reddit, and conversations happened there instead. So from a distance, it seems like a cycle of life thing? But maybe someone could explain what I missed.
Comment sections don't just "turn bad", the reason they turn bad is when there is little to no moderation. Then at a certain point they become so toxic that you either invest a lot of time and effort in cleaning them up, getting rid of the bad actors, etc, etc. Or, you do the cost saving thing and throw out the baby with the bad water by removing comments.
While writing this I realized I commented something similar a while ago and then I saw you were there as well ;)
Yes, there's more detail I glossed over :)
Another thing that happens sometimes is staff turnover. The people who got the newspaper on the Internet were enthusiasts, excited about the potential of reaching out to their readers using the World Wide Web. Eventually they left. Maybe there's nobody else on staff who is enthusiastic about it. A feature that takes work and has no internal advocate tends to get cut.
Other websites might be more persistent because hosting forums is closer to their main mission, though the whole site might shut down eventually or evolve into something else.
In the long run, websites are mostly transient, because there are organizations behind them and most organizations don't last. There are important exceptions, though.
I actually love this. I think most sites where discussion is not a key aspect of the platform should do the same. The less comment sections where they're unnecessary, the better. Plenty of sites where the comment sections are absolutely useless
Not every website or platform needs to be social. Not every website or platform needs to accommodate drive-by ignorance. We'll be better off when companies get past the idea of trying to turn every product or service into a social one.
I'm kind of sad about this. I always liked looking at comments. People would point out small details that I missed, or help to explain/theorize when an episode was confusing. I rarely, if ever saw someone say anything bad. This might be biased in that I tended to watch more niche Slice of Life/Drama shows, rather than the big popular action shows.
I watch some of the big shows and also rarely saw really hateful comments. Plenty of criticisms of CR or the episode, but rarely anything truly hateful. I really enjoyed reading the comments. Even the simple ones talking about how they liked the epsiode or specific moments/lines.
I often found that a vast majority of those comments were made by people trying to pretend to be smart by noticing things that aren't really obvious unless you've read ahead in the source material. Especially since those sorts of comments were so much rarer in anime original shows. So really, people pointing out those details weren't much more than thinly veiled spoilers.
Many years ago when I was still using Crunchyroll, I went out of my way to write a Greasemonkey userscript to block the comments section. It was an instant improvement of my experience because all of the comments were not only annoying, but also useless. I doubt I missed anything significant.
A shame to hear. The only time I went to the comments was when I was watching Gundam ZZ, which has this odd problem of one or two lines being unsubtitled per episode, and generally there was a comment filling those in. It'll suck that people who watch from now on won't have that option.
Their comment section has its share of dbags, but few are outright toxic. For the most part they're useful and can be entertaining. If you can't handle the comments, you probably can't handle the anime (i.e. shows with more fan service tend to have worse comments). I'm betting Sony did this just to save a few dimes. This will suck without the peanut gallery to provide easy answers, let me know if recaps are worth watching or that there's more at the end. Q_Q
Anime has an issue of having things that aren't easy to understand or that get confusing and the comment section often sheds light on them. Be it weird sayings, untranslated text/words or something that can only be understood by reading the light novel.
I'm wondering if this is going to start to become a thing with a lot of platforms. Youtube is currently experiencing an insane influx of harmful / outright illegal comments and not every creator can keep up with it. It's somehow getting easier for the people creating these bots to get around security measures like 2FA, and AI can churn out so much spam, I'm not sure what these websites can do about it.
On one hand, I do like reading comments from time to time, but on the other, I end up reading some of the most braindead or purposefully inflamatory things ever written in comment sections on big name websites. So I'm not really sure how to feel about more platforms potentially moving away from the more social aspects of their services.
I feel like there is plenty of seperate spaces to discuss content you enjoy, and having that seperation might even help create friction for these bot creators from even bothering in the first place.
I can't tell if this was written by an AI or just poorly edited. Not a strong showing by IGN for the opening paragraph of a news article, either way.
Poorly edited. This is the sort of mistake AIs don’t do.