Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2019
- Messages
- 50
It’s not a founding admin; it’s someone who joined relatively recently (around two years ago) and appears to have close ties with NamiComi, which is part of the broader issue here.Ah, I must've missed that in all the chatter. Thought it was a mod, not an admin. Dunno if they were around from the founding, but if so, wouldn't they have final authority on what they want and don't want to see on their site? If people don't want to support them because they can't find titles they're looking for, no one is twisting their arm and forcing them to. I'm pretty sure the site would do just fine without certain titles, regardless of how haphazardly the rule is applied. Again, just because it's community-supported doesn't mean that the community can dictate everything. Sure, hit them in the pocketbook to prove a point, but is there enough to do just that? I'm pretty sure the site would survive with or without whatever titles people are taking issue with. I mean, what's to stop them from reinstating them only to have them mysteriously nuked under a "DMCA takedown" notice? How is that any different? This is taking any of the admin's comments out of the equation, mind you.
If we're being honest, none of the "legal mumbo-jumbo" presented on this site would stand up in court anyway, and it's really just a poor attempt to avoid running afoul of any laws (a really bad way of "get out of jail free").
I agree that the staff ultimately have final authority. However, I disagree with the idea that the community cannot influence basic features of the site. The platform is not only community-supported but community-based. It runs on content created by others. If the staff were producing the content themselves, your argument would be stronger. But since everything on the site is created entirely by the community, that community naturally has a stronger voice and greater leverage than the staff, whose role should primarily be to maintain the site as a reliable hub for that content.
I would recommend looking at this comment I made where I go into more detail about the issues surrounding this situation, as I don’t want to repeat the same points. It should be obvious, though, that if contributors stop uploading their scan group content to MD, the site would suffer. DMCA takedowns at least have a clear justification, and people can usually verify them through formal notices issued to the site. That is very different from selectively removing content because it is deemed “problematic,” especially when there is no clear reasoning provided to support that decision and would affect in reality around 90% of the content of the site, since it's not specifically "loli" content but any "underage-related" content, which would vanish any slice-of-life that contains romance from adolescents, as I mentioned in the other comment, titles like Kaguya-sama, Sono Bisque, Horimiya, Berserk and many other would be in those rules to be also removed from this site.
You also touched on the main issue people are raising. The staff’s justification for the takedown focuses entirely on the alleged illegality of the content. But considering that the site itself is built around unauthorized content, which would not stand up in court, it raises the question of why they are relying so heavily on a legal argument—especially if the specific content in question does not actually violate any laws.
When you combine this with the staff member’s comment, in which he effectively labeled anyone who reads any “loli” content as a pedophile, it becomes easier to understand why the situation escalated so quickly.