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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

They’re still just within the threshold of good enough, but I was pretty annoyed the day comments disappeared. It might have been young viewers, but I was a young viewer once and those comments went back all the way to that time. It was also one thing Crunchyroll had that other streaming sites typically don’t (except YouTube of course): community.

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CR removing comments removed the soul from the product :/

Was always fun reading the top comments on big episodes. Finding those few other ppl who noticed that one small thing at timestamp 14:30, dunking on the first episode of the latest garbage isekai... etc

Yes, that the comments disappeared was terrible. Some comment would have early and precious information in some cases, e.g. the existence of a direct precursor (not part of the list of 'seasons'), and tons of other information, not just comments about characters in the show or whatever. And reviews don't have comments either, I miss those. Would have saved wasted time.

Yep!

> dunking on the first episode of the latest garbage isekai

I was literally reaching to see if somebody else had already made a lame-ass “Truck-kun” joke on the first episode of No Longer Allowed in Another World or if I was going to have to provide a fill when I saw the change.

It's a shame but understandable from a business perspective since they had to have a moderation team to support some of the less savory comments juvenile users were leaving.

No, it’s not understandable because Crunchyroll has spent the majority of its time as a streaming service as a commercial paid or free-with-ads service that has a community, with comments under every video up until like last year. Moderation is an expense, but it’s 1) not an unreasonable one, especially given the scale of Crunchyroll and a paid subscriber base and 2) some investment in automating moderation or developing tools for their moderators can reduce the cost of maintaining moderation.

It was a deliberate choice that removed some of the value of the service and wiped out yet another swath of Internet history. The core is of course the videos, they can coast on that for a while, but it’s the changes like that add up that make Crunchyroll less competitive going forward, especially as other larger services acquire larger anime libraries.

The problem is that '.. make Crunchyroll less competitive..' isn't really happening. There is no competition. Even when there are multiple providers (say, Netflix in addition to Crunchyroll), a particular show, or even season, will be licensed to exactly one of them, in any particular region. There was a particular show where I had to juggle between CR and N for every season because CR and N couldn't both license all the seasons.

And.. it's actually better if absolutely everything is on Crunchyroll. One subscription and you're set. Or I am, at least. Having to hunt around to figure out where some particular show can be found.. subscribe there only for watching that particular one.. mostly it can't be done, in my region, and I absolutely don't want to.

Which of course also gives CR no competition, and that's the price we pay. When the quality has gone down enough, the alternative isn't moving to a competitor, it's to give up on anime altogether.

Plan B is of course to get my Japanese up to a level sufficient to be able to turn off the subs, at least any potential problem there will be gone.

I pay much less for CR than for Netflix, I would rather pay more on Crunchyroll if this could guarantee a certain quality. Netflix, on the other hand, is basically a giant waste of money for me. That I haven't cancelled yet is just lazyness.

Shrugs. I don't know what to tell you. I'm glad to see that you're passionate about it I guess but most of my friends who use Crunchyroll were also equally unsurprised when they removed the comment section. I can't think of any streaming services that have something like that - as I said before, there's literally no upside to it for CR. Those comment sections could also be a puerile cesspool.

I'm sure there was an extremely vocal minority that threw a fit when they killed it off, but I doubt their overall subscriber numbers were significantly impacted. The majority of people are just there to watch anime. There's plenty of subreddits that are vastly more suitable to discussion.

Calling the Crunchyroll anime comment section a community is a bit of a stretch, it's like saying that the comments under a TikTok video are a community.

My original point stands.

A brand is built on sentiment. That's the upside. You are witnessing exactly why it's important here, as people tell you why they're going to stop being customers. I don't watch anime so have no skin in this game, but this is a classic tale at this point.

A company gets successful off the back of community engagement and builds great shared sentiment with its customers. They get bought, the incoming board members start cutting costs, accidentally cutting the artery they didn't realise fed the heart of the brand.

The company loses an edge the board didn't realise it had, and people slowly lose that connection, which allows them to painlessly jump ship to the next company with the same catalog but better sentiment brand.

"Calling the Crunchyroll anime comment section a community is a bit of a stretch, it's like saying that the comments under a TikTok video are a community."

Am I missing something here? (I don't use TikTok).

- The comment section under a youtube video is a community.

- The comments on the side of Instagram pictures is a community.

- Twitch chat is a community.

- Even Imgur has a community. I'm surprised that's a thing, but they do.

For the most part this HN community is comments bolted on to content from different websites, we call this a community with no issues. I don't think it's a stretch.

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