Recent reports have announced that Crunchyroll, the largest anime streaming service, will be replacing Aegisub with Israeli Software, OOONA, to produce subtitles more efficiently. Anime fans across the world are disappointed with this collaboration due to Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians (via a report by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry).
Crunchyroll is also ignoring the needs of groups who require Closed Captions to understand the scenes better. They are isolating a large chunk of their audience in favor of AI-based subtitling, which defeats the point of a streaming service. Overall, this hasn’t been a great year for Crunchyroll, and this won’t be the end of it.
All the streaming services are unethical now, both in pricing and operation. Netflix is maybe the least bad, but I can’t justify the cost for that, either.
Stremio + Torrentio is the way to go.
What happens next is like what happened in the 2000s. People will turn to piracy as legitimate content is no longer feasible, affordable, or ethical. Then the corporate oligarchs will crack down violently to make examples of the people they’ve given no other choice or recourse.
It’s time to eat the rich.
Netflix charges me, a single guy, for 4 simultaneous streams if I want 4k. So I shared with my parents.
Then they had the audacity to stop people from password sharing or to charge even more if you want to share. I set up an automatic email forward so my parents get every sign in related email.
Torrentio has started blocking VPNs.
I don’t know, I find I also have the option to not consume media that I can’t pay for or justify ethically. For instance, the only streaming service we have a subscription for is The Criterion Channel.
True. But many people can justify it ethically.
I’m looking for an ethical anime streaming service rn, and i’d be willing to pay for it (like, $10/month). Any options at all?
Like, “ethical” means that the money is used to keep the studio running that is producing the anime; not that the money goes to some big banks to profit off anime.
yeah, that just doesn’t exist anymore
Good for you, but Oovid opened my eyes to how different our living conditions are.
Some people may have may many alternatives, some few and some none
Even if you make good money, it is still ethically questionable to support predatory practices and financially reward the objectively evil. Piracy is ethically neutral at worst and can easily be interpreted as a net positive, at least where it comes to most media. I deliberately choose to support some obscure stuff with my dollar because I want its creators to succeed and my conscience is clean.