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.
I’m not 100% on board with @[email protected] because it gives off some “but you participate in society, interesting” vibes. However, as an American I am all for people from the rest of the world boycotting our products (and this time not because of the health implications!). When Canadians were promoting non-american alternatives I agreed with them so I think we can say fuck companies and still stand with the actual individual people who want peace and everyone to prosper respectfully.