this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Crunchyroll has faced backlash after voice actor David Wald revealed the company has been illegally opening and distributing his fan mail for the past five years, violating U.S. federal law regarding obstruction of correspondence. This revelation sparked widespread outrage, highlighting Crunchyroll's questionable practices, including its monopoly over anime distribution in the West following its acquisition by Sony. Critics argue that Crunchyroll has become complacent, exemplified by the failure of its original content and a significant price increase for subscriptions. Furthermore, Wald's situation underscores broader issues within the company, such as alleged discrimination against voice actors and a toxic work environment. Crunchyroll's response has been inadequate, stating they are investigating the matter but failing to acknowledge their responsibility. This incident adds to the growing list of grievances against Crunchyroll, raising concerns about the treatment of voice actors and the future of anime distribution.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (9 children)

following its acquisition from Sony

Has anything good EVER come from big company acquisitions AT ALL?

Geocities -> acquired by Yahoo -> crap -> death

Youtube -> acquired by Google -> ad crap

Blogger -> acquired by Google -> crap

Macromedia -> acquired by Adobe -> Monopoly crap

Washington Post -> acquired by Bezos -> political crap

MySQL -> Acquired by Oracle -> copyright crap

Github -> acquired by Microsoft -> crap

Reddit -> acquired by Conde Nast -> political crap

Twitter -> acquired by Musk -> utter crap

Every single time I see a cool startup get bought by a big player, all I can see is the service going to shit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

MySpace -> acquired by News Corporation -> insta death

Also, Twitter was always crap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Also, Twitter was always crap.

So true cancel culture,drama,toxicity,etc

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Well yes. That's the point. Cut costs (slash staff, quality, etc) then make as much money as you can as fast as you can off the goodwill and fan loyalty built up by the original product/service.

Vulture Capital doing what it does. Make everything shittier AND more expensive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Just went down the rabbit-hole of the acquisition of MySQL as I was bored. What a fascinating story.

Dude who originally made it in 1995, Michael Widenius, named it after his daughter My, hence MySQL. He sold it to Sun for $1 billion in 2008. He then turned around, forked the software, and produced MariaDB (I always wondered why it was named that) starting a new organization around it in 2009. It's functionally nearly identical, often able to be used as a drop in replacement, assuming you aren't using new features developed after the fork. Last month, he sold it again, the same fucking base software, to some private equity firm (yay...). What a guy.

Unfortunately, he's run out of daughters to name software after and already used his son's name for something else, so we might be at the end of open-source, community-driven DB solutions from Michael. To be fair, relying on any projects from him to be free and open indefinitely is apparently not a good idea anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

Crunchyroll's (then Funimation) acquisition of Animelab is what led me to stop paying to stream anime.

Lower quality videos. Harder to navigate. Distracting watermarks on the side of the screen. Blocking VPNs. Ads even though you already pay them.

I hate that there is so little effort put into preventing monopolies from buying out the competition

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Idk if it's appropriate to mention this:
Opera --> acquired by kunlun --> marketing lies and became a trash browser

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Blogger is no longer supported and is suffering greatly people are leaving it in droves. You might as well call it dead

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Holden being acquired by General Motors was okay for a while. Then it died, because they couldn't be stuffed with the Australian market, or the local car industry at the time (and in doing so, likely kicked off its demise).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I was just thinking today that any time i hear about a new company ill ask “are they publicly traded or planning to be?” I feel like thatll save a lot of time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Roster Teeth and Wizards of the Coast. Those turned out just cycling great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Roster Teeth was in charge of their own demise.