@JasonWander
Yeah I agree but not everyone knows how to torrent or is too afraid of downloading a virus so they just go to sites that have torrented this stuff already, and then uploaded the files on their site. But even torrent sites have ads you know, so you don't escape them.
Also pay wall????? The only groups that do that don't do it for long. Zero let you read a day early if you donated once. Then they stopped because they thought it unfair for everyone else and that donations were second to pleasing others. Rikk (in military) only had a pay wall for me because I paid for him to make more chapters and he let me edit them so he could keep release schedule steady while stockpiling for me to read. Pay wall is a bullshit excuse imo, and none of the people who left have pay walls...
Legal is everyone's dream, who doesn't want to make a living hosting a site that other people make content for. Going legit isn't their issue, it's other stuff. Also if they go legit (never gonna happen tho) mangadex would have to become its own scanlation team and remove all their content because there's no way they get contracts with even 1/10 of the publishers and or get permission for even 1/1000 of the projects. The pipe dream isn't the reason they left, it's because they're disillusioned with the site. This was supposed to be the reddit of Manga, batoto s successor, where you could upload your own stuff when you wanted, have viewers read on your own site and donate to fund projects, in reality it is both lawless and authoritarian, some rules are enforced and other ignored, some people get punished for something everyone else walks away from, it became far less about a community than just complaints and bad leadership