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.
By definition of their country they’re supporting their government, through taxes if nothing else.
It’s not like many of these businesses have much of a choice…
Israel is one of the most expensive places in the world to do business.
They have more than enough choice to move somewhere without the local hostilities and human rights abuses.
They choose not to because of religion.
I get that, but it’s not like it’s optional to pay taxes.
The point is more: Crunchyroll chooses to pay the sub company (Israeli based) to provide them with a service. The company pays taxes to the Israeli government. So the flow of money becomes:
Subscriber pays Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll pays sub company
Sub company pays taxes to Israeli government
If I don’t want my dollars to go towards the Israeli government even in a small scale, I don’t pay Crunchyroll.
As one person, it isn’t much, but multiply that by a million subs and now you’re sending a message