MangaDex Development Update - API Abuse Enforcement

[Tony_Mushah]

I can definitely see why they want to nuke guests and collect information to sell with these numbers.

What??

 

[Angry_Panda]

Online statistics
Members online 296
Guests online 4,648
Total visitors 6,944
I can definitely see why they want to nuke guests and collect information to sell with these numbers.

Except those are the forum counts, not the mainsite counts, and there's been no restriction put in place on forum access. (And you've always needed an account to comment.)

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

The way I understand it, MD is already kind of a Youtube for manga. Users can upload (almost) anything and it's only taken down when DMCA'd or removed by the uploader. This is true both on Youtube and MD.

That would be an incredibly lame reason for such a statement though.
Like, I expect there to be something interesting behind that vision.

 

[Mangamoz]

From the looks of it, the new members joining cause of the new changes, are not gonna do so with a hug and a kiss.

 

[shinya78]

Like, I expect there to be something interesting behind that vision.

From the looks of it, the move seems more about turning guests into users than actual abuse enforcement.
Guests hit the abysmally low cap -> flood of new users -> new users on the new comments system on main site.
It sounds tinfoil, but it's getting "there".

 

[BestBoy]

reason

the move

I would say I'm probably on the money given a recent "This" react.

It's also not the first time I've heard someone describe MD as youtube for manga (can't remember if that was staff or user, forum or discord). So it's not really an original thought to this thread. It's been out in the ether for a while.

 

[toyotacorona]

To be fair, it could be a lot worse. yes, i did have to make an account, but honestly having 3 folders of bookmarks to get around making an account was a bad idea at best, so getting forced to make an account wasnt the worst thing to happen to me today.

 

[Angry_Panda]

To be fair, it could be a lot worse. yes, i did have to make an account, but honestly having 3 folders of bookmarks to get around making an account was a bad idea at best, so getting forced to make an account wasnt the worst thing to happen to me today.

...very nice choice of account name and pic.

 

[toyotacorona]

...very nice choice of account name and pic.

why thank you, i have a 60's magazine ad of the US launch on my wall.
As for the account name it was either my current one or "isuzupizzaz"

Edit: its actually 1970's

 

[shinya78]

I would say I'm probably on the money given a recent "This" react.

The way I understand it, MD is already kind of a Youtube for manga. Users can upload (almost) anything and it's only taken down when DMCA'd or removed by the uploader. This is true both on Youtube and MD.

If it already is a kind of YT for manga, then that does not explain "the move"

reintroduce limits for users not logged in

Guests can binge watch nearly any video content that platform provides, with the only real "login-walled" restriction being commenting and age-restricted content. "The move" only hinders the guest users more than the scrapers and bots.

Mind you that this scenario happened...

Not to mention, they could probably just add a log-in feature in their app, make an account to log into, bypass the 10-chapter limit that way, then continue scraping away.

That one would be really easy to detect though, given that one account would do data requests not possible by a human.

...and was confirmed in reddit when they tried implementing this measure the first time.

There will certainly be some scrapers that create accounts just to continue abusing (heck, we even get draft submissions from weird scam accounts from time to time 😂), but we have ways to monitor and limit rulebreakers accordingly (in fact, the degradation I mentioned in the announcement was mainly caused by a pretty... peculiar individual trying to scrape every single chapter in the website, but the ban hammer hit them so no clue what happened after that).

 

[BestBoy]

YT for manga

I'm not convinced Neko's comment about that was related to the API abuse stuff, but rather all the other changes MD has been making. Since it was in reply to Tscheddov's anecdote about cancelling support due to past events.

Maybe that's too generous of an interpretation for you, but that's how I read it.

 

[seekermoc]

The way I understand it, MD is already kind of a Youtube for manga. Users can upload (almost) anything and it's only taken down when DMCA'd or removed by the uploader. This is true both on Youtube and MD.

Sure, if you either ignore the ever increasing ads on YT or assume that's what MD is working towards.

 

[cybeast21]

Here we are, back again with the same old limit (which is still applied with cookies, from the looks of it) and that can be blocked by the same old banner that can be blocked by Ublock, which does nothing to prevent actual bots from scraping the sites but only prevents users who only want to read, and forces them to make an account, which, considering recent MangaDex moves, inspires no confidence in the slightest.

We'll see now how this plays out. I hope well for most people. I hope MD can roll out some actually good spam prevention and not something dumb like this.

Exactly. I'm not assuming or accusing MD of something, but the timing (why is it a problem NOW? As in, a problem enough to finally take an action, and not before? Also, the Search function only available to logged user) does makes people think the scrapper and bot are just an excuse to implement this, to force people to create user account, to inflate the user number to make it look good (for investor? anyone higher-up? idk).

Not to mention, the social media style comment on the chapter itself to "increase engagement".

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

, but rather all the other changes MD has been making.

That's what I was inquiring about before. What does that even mean in practice from the mangadex dev team perspective?
I'm curious about their vision and it would be cool to see it

 

[pandascepter]

I dont want to see the world on fire.
Good, more user, more sacrifice for shitposting together on mangodex dot org.