A few recent events have made me rethink my support of a place we all use and love: batoto. As you may know, this manga hosting web has taken down several manga due to them not being appropriate for the site. The staff is the one making the decisions of what to take down, and after some manga being taken down in a way that worried me, I wrote to a mod. I won’t release his name because it’s not relevant, but he told me I could release what he wrote me back, and therefore, I’ll do so. I’ll start with my initial message:
I’ve read somewhere that you said there was a discussion going in the staff about adult content policy (I also saw that you edited that message). If it’s true (if it’s not, you should), you should make this discussion public and allow people to participate. Why? Because not only being a moderator of a community means listening to what the community thinks, but they would provide you with arguments, examples and ideas that wouldn’t come to you.
You may not realize, but this is a serious problem. You’re not discussing only what should and shouldn’t be allowed, but if people will or will not keep supporting you. As an example, I’m thinking about asking you to delete all my releases from the site and not allowing anyone to upload them if nothing changes (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), since I can’t support in any way a site that has such a subjective content policy (not to talk about how stupid it would be as it is, even if it was not subjective. I mean, allowing the most gore and violent manga out there while not allowing something as beautiful as consensual sex should be for moral reasons is the most stupid and hypocrite shit I’ve ever read). Of course, this is not a new problem, and you may think I’m an isolated case, but as time goes by, more people will start thinking “Ok, this is enough”, or simply realize there’s a problem they hadn’t seen until now.
So, to sum it up, rethink your policy, and check out what people thinks and what ideas they have. This site needs it.
And his first reply:
First of all, I’m glad you care enough about this to PM me in an orderly fashion and not rant in the comments sections of comics.
The last time we formed an adult content guide, public input didn’t go so constructively as we would have hoped. (I say “we”, but I wasn’t around at the time.) The admins feel that the staff is perfectly capable of creating a fair rules system, which will incorporate both public demand as well as the realities of advertising, without unnecessary harassment.
The fundamental conflict is pretty straightforward: We want to allow as much manga as possible while running afoul of neither laws nor advertising network policies. Nobody at Batoto is rejecting manga on moral grounds.
Laws are simple. There’s one rule, and it’s no child porn. We have servers in 4 countries, and the owner of Batoto is located in another, and we must abide by the strictest of all those laws, which makes even the smallest depiction or even an inference of child porn illegal.
As for advertising, it’s an uncertain field. That is where the crux of our debating revolves around, and unfortunately it’s going to be at least as subjective as our estimation of the boundaries of advertisers’ interpretations of public opinion, which is pretty damn subjective. (And no, we do not have any other feasible alternatives from advertisers.)
I can keep you updated, but for now we’re just getting started hashing out the details, or even figuring out which details to hash. You can share this response with anyone who wants it, but unfortunately I can’t spend too much time explaining details to everyone until we’re ready to make things public.
Sincerely,
So far so good. But this was not enough for me. I liked that place, and I wanted it to be the best it could be (as we do all). So, I replied him again:
And that’s exactly my point of making this argument public.
Look, you pointed out various problems, and I think most of them could be solved this way.
First, you mentioned me not ranting on the forums. Well, there’s a reason why that happened (people ranting, I mean). Part of a community was suddenly deprived of something for a reason apparently arbitrary, poorly understood, and completely subjective, and the decision was made in a completely one-sided way, so of course they would feel left out and get mad.
Then, you said you want to allow as much manga as possible, but face some problems. More precisely, three of them: Laws in the countries where the servers are located, laws in the country the owner of Batoto lives, and advertising network policies.
Well, why don’t you make an announcement that says exactly that, and ask for people to give suggestions as to how to solve those problems? People don’t know about these (the only one I’ve heard about before is the advertisement one), so they won’t be able to help you. But if you made that announcement, and allowed people to give ideas in a thread, they would more than gladly do it (me being the first). You may want to allow all the manga out there, but much more than you, we do. Most people consider batoto the best place to read manga online, and for pretty good reasons, so think about how we feel when a manga we were reading gets taken down, or worse, a manga we were releasing. So of course we would do everything we could to help, specially if that something is discussing possibilities and alternatives. You may be worried about how a thread like that would turn out, but just read what I just wrote. People don’t come here to trash out the site, but to enjoy manga.
Also, you may think those problems have no solution, but take a look at exhentai (I don’t know if you know about it, or how it works exactly). Recently, some translators received a notification to stop and delete all their releases from the copyright owners. So did they delete them from exhentai? No, they didn’t. They just hid them, and now only some users that have enough “parameters” (number of posts, uploads, account age,…) can see them. Other users won’t be able to find them at all, as if they didn’t exists in the first place. Of course, I’m not saying you must do the same, but it’s certainly an option that would solve some of your problems. And if someone could come up with that, what couldn’t a whole community committed to a cause? And even if there was no way to solve those problems, at least people would have a better grasp of the situation, and get a better feeling of what’s going on exactly, which is always good, since it automatically solves the problem of people ranting about your decisions, or at least a big part of it.
So, again, I must insist. Make this argument public. People will try to help you, I’m completely sure of it. After all, no matter how good you guys are at solving problems, you can’t be better than you+us.
And here’s what happened nex:
The bottom line is, the staff can do a better job deciding what’s best for Batoto without the input of a few nice users and a bunch of angry ones. It’s sounds a bit callous, but really, it’s Grumpy, Trebor, and mhh’s website, it’s their prerogative, and the public is just going to have to trust the founders of the site to make the best decision for Batoto again on this one. It’s a business/legal decision, not a moral one.
For your sake, I will suggest making the rules public before they go into effect, but I can’t promise anything concrete. We’re just getting started.
So, you may have noticed that there’s a guideline on what is allowed and what not regarding adult content now (it seems it was already there, and I just missed it somehow, or maybe I never really cared since I’m not releasing adult content). I suggest you read them, because they are pure gold. I can’t bring myself to support a site like this, so I wrote him back one last time:
Well, I just read your guidelines about adult content… and I must say that good job in doing the most stupid thing you could have done.
First of all, I gave you a few reasons why I thought you should have done a public announcement on why you need those guidelines in the first place and make it participative. Instead of making some arguments back, you simply told me “Nah, we’re awesome and don’t need you at all. We don’t even trust you (why even make a site like this if you don’t trust your users?) and know that there are more assholes in this place than people wanting to help”. Well, I’ve been trying to be nice and all, but fuck you too.
Then, you’re probably gonna tell me about how you can prove me that you’re right about users being an angry bunch that can’t be helpful, but they have the right to be so when you do things like this, man (I mean, even I am really mad right now, and I consider myself to be a pretty calm guy). You released a set of completely stupid guidelines (according to them, things like dragon ball can’t be allowed because they depict kids genitalia, a chair can be considered a character and the site shouldn’t even exist because my conservative and strict parents would ground and/or kill me for showing manga to my young sibbling, no matter what it’s about), didn’t even explain why they are needed (this was the most important part, and you completely ignored me, making everyone mad for no fucking reason. I’ve only read comments on how you’re a bunch of hypocrite moralfags that want to keep winning money unsing the scanlators’ hard work. Even Hitler explained why he wanted to kill jews, for fucks sake), and made it completely one-sided (as in, these are the rules. You like them? Cool. You don’t? Fuck you, no matter how right you may be). And I bet you’re even thinking about what a bad userbase you have, and how they shouldn’t get this mad in the first place (yeah, we should follow your every rule, because this is your site, not ours, and you’re clearly superior beings that can make better choices than we do).
Well, you’ve lost me. I’m over with this place. Please, take down my releases (.flow, Corpse Party 2U, Sekai Oni (chapters 1 and 2) and Yume Nikki, (both English and Spanish)). I’ll notify you to take them down again if I notice someone else uploads them.
And that’s it. I just wrote this, so the manga is still there, but hopefully, it will be taken down soon. I don’t know what you think, who you agree with, or whatever, but this is my decision. Therefore, please, don’t upload any of my releases to batoto. I’m thinking about how to proceed now, but if you have any complaint, feedback, or whatever, please, write me, and I’ll be glad to read it.
Thank you for reading me until now, and I hope you keep doing so.
tl;dr: I don’t support batoto anymore. Please, don’t upload my release there.
EDIT: Ok, the argument has taken a new direction altogether, so maybe it won’t happen in the end. For now, I’ll wait and see. I’ll tell you about any change.
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