[X] My Assistant

You are still failing to provide evidence.

Even if the claims are substantial, as the one arguing for something you have to provide proof.

In the first place, this isn't exactly the person to talk to about this. It's not likely he has much influence over their relations.

Seems like the same question, but if I'm to elaborate on the topic as a whole: if piracy generated any considerable amount of money, I think more artists would embrace it, so I'm willing to believe their words here.

Piracy through fan translations do bring in sales. Piracy of officially licensed content does not. I'll be pretty upset when I see this "experiment" used as yet another data point against fan translations (re: Irodori), because the reality is that many artists in Japan simply never translate anything to English at all because you and many others put out this image that fan translations are harmful to the doujinshi scene. Please be more aware of how Fakku affects the fan translation community. I know this isn't your target audience, since you obviously only deal with licensed works, but it's been hell dealing with the backlash that we get from the message you keep sending. At least if you bother to make the distinction instead of implying that all piracy is bad, it would help our community a lot.

You are still failing to provide evidence.

Even if the claims are substantial, as the one arguing for something you have to provide proof.

In the first place, this isn't exactly the person to talk to about this. It's not likely he has much influence over their relations.

I don't understand. Are you saying this shouldn't be discussed here?

Isn't the thread open for discussing about FAKKU and the stuff being taken down? What else do you expect to be the topic of discussion? The OP gives the impression he represents FAKKU on this website, so it's only natural people ask questions about it.

Unless you expect (and make clear) the thread to be just people apologizing over the flamming in the galleries, I don't see how you can reasonably expect this won't be discussed here.

I'm not saying ninetydollardoujin is right either, but there's a difference between letting the discussion happen naturally with whatever proof he might have and shutting it down because criticism isn't allowed.

This post has been edited by bananapow: Jul 24 2020, 15:33

I normally do not post in fakku shitthreads but since there are at least three (four?) people who are reading the thread instead of just scanning the last posts for cherrypicked sentences to attack, it may be worth this time.

That said, the thread finished in the first couple of posts already. The posts are quite more civil than the normal for these threads but the message they provide is just the same.

Was it really assumed that walking in like there's no history between the site and FAKKU and doing what amounted to advertising would be received with open arms? FAKKU has a huge amount of bad blood between not only the community here but as far as I can tell the greater hentai community as a whole and it consistently refuses to address it beyond just deriding the same communities it claims to be trying to connect with. You can't blame the hive for attacking you when you shove your hand into it looking for dollars, even if you put honey in the form of old doujins over it.

If this is a genuine attempt to start a conversation then I'd of said that would be a good start, but opening a conversation after you've been rejected when you could of tried any time prior seems like bad form to me. Maybe hire a community manager or a PR specialist when you try things like this because you couldn't of botched this harder, honestly. And I say all this as someone who doesn't hate especially FAKKU, honestly. The worst I can say about you guys is you work with Irodori, which is worth a good measure of hatred but is frankly another conversation.

And I cannot agree more. You guys need a better PR system, and that includes inside and outside the fakku website itself. I often discuss who to take as volunteers for certain jobs - here and elsewhere - and I would just not take people with experience in places such as fakku because of their thin skin and sometimes extreme expectations. And no, I'm not talking about only fakku here - the kind of place I would not "employ" people from is incredibly common in several places (e.g. political science majors). Seriously, the attempt at using the banners with the FAKKU account is going for two weeks only and:

Needless to say, this was not well-received, and the vocal part of the community made it clear our presence is not wanted here. As a result, I've disabled those galleries, and we won't upload anything else in the foreseeable future. This experiment clearly failed, and if Jacob or anyone else suggests we'll try something similar at a later date, I'm going to strongly advise against it.

That said, this is the only thing changing. E-Hentai has honored DMCA claims for as long as I can remember, and we'll continue to protect our content from direct rips. As mentioned above, the site has supported banners for licensed content for half a decade, and we'll likely continue to take advantage of this feature in the future. All this new system does is add a tool for tasks that site staff had to manually perform in the past.

To sum it up, we heard your feedback and won't post any of our content on here anymore. If you have any further questions regarding this or anything else related to FAKKU, feel free to post them here and I'll answer to the best of my abilities. I only skimmed through the comments on some of our galleries, and if you posted any legit feedback, it was likely drowned out by all the vitriol. I'll gladly give you a reply, but you'll have to repost it here. Sorry about that.

All we really see is an action of "I got offended so I'm taking *all* my toys out of the playground and go home". This does not help PR but harms your PR even more.

So yeah, you need some advice on how to proceed in situations which require a good deal of patience and thick skin. To get someone who can do PR advice may be a good idea. That is, if you want to do anything useful - here or elsewhere - that is not just plain luck. Any piece of work that does something important in this world is a marathon, not a sprint. Giving up after trying something new for two weeks is plain bad. Someone needed to tell you that.

Reference: The Stack Overflow community screwed up with similar actions over moderators who were critical of tools that were just a couple of weeks new, not that long ago - and they do have a PR department, lol.

The following picture sums up what both sides should have done instead:

while i do understand the decision to halt any future fakku uploads, taking down the existing uploads from fakku (esp. the older one) would only further reinforce the "fakku-only-uploads-here-just-so-they-can-take-down-other-galleries-as-well" conspiracy.

in my humble opinion, letting these galleries stay would be a better PR move.

I don't understand. Are you saying this shouldn't be discussed here?

This topic is for FAKKU. Obviously, he is welcome to discuss it here.
However, if he or anyone else wants to talk about any claims outside of the newly introduced system, then they should do it with something to back them up along with the acceptance that this may not be the best representative to talk to for those issues.
Otherwise, it goes nowhere or worse, goes back to the shit-flinging.

Might as well air out my 2 cents.
Obligatory Miranda warning: These are just my personal thoughts as some scrub. Please do not attribute them to any other person or to any group. 'You' refers only to Fakku or an official agent on their behalf.

I don't like Fakku, or really want them here, but the sheer amount of flak they got is kind of funny.
They seem to have flubbed every part of this affair- the first vanilla elf doujin wasn't bad. Then they rapid fired 3 dark ones.
Too much too quick, and that 3rd one is the kind of thing even a non-Jacob might get grief over.
They didn't address the community any until just now, ignoring them entirely sans removing a line about good response. Then they full remove all 4 new galleries- and a 5 year old one that wasn't controversial.
I'd say they hurt their image more and burnt the bridge, but that implies either was in workable shape to start with.

And some further context and two cents: Yes, I know Fakku didn't do a lot of the things the people making noise have accused them of; that they're not some monolithic boogeyman ripping patch cords and doujins out of e-hentai's servers by the score in the night. I still do not like them, an opinion which was certainly colored by the Hentai Haven affair, but I'm not going to fling shit, slurs, and threats. There are uploaders here I also do not like, and that is fine.

A slow and gentle hand is the way to try and get the masses to not Flip The Fuck Out. The sudden offering with closed ears spooked them. You lobbed a biscuit in a dog's face that didn't trust you before, and seem a bit dumbfounded that it snarled.

The choice of content also strikes me strange- fjorded things by design get less traffic, and attract a different element. Something more plain would get the banner more views, and reach more of the people that would likely buy something. A person that wants a loli amputee harem doujin probably isn't the most casual of browsers. Something vanilla-ish featuring a currently popular character seems likely to attract casual users just after easy porn.

All in all some stupid people got mad, an unwinnable scenario was triggered, and an inordinate amount of tomatos were thrown. Instead of slipping out the back and waiting for them to get tired, you took it all back and then some, thus making sure they have plenty of tomatos for next time.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: Jul 24 2020, 18:15

All we really see is an action of "I got offended so I'm taking *all* my toys out of the playground and go home". This does not help PR but harms your PR even more.

This is what I anticipated 8 days ago. Fakku knew very well what was going to happen and used it as an opportunity to come out as a victim. Some of the responses in this thread appears to be scripted rather than genuine and concerned. If this is how Fakku wants to improve their relationship with people, then lol. I pray that people will see through Fakku's victim playing, as victim playing is not something that should be cherished. [files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/in4hw0.png

You are still failing to provide evidence.

Even if the claims are substantial, as the one arguing for something you have to provide proof.

In the first place, this isn't exactly the person to talk to about this. It's not likely he has much influence over their relations.

Typing "TorrentFreak Takahashi" in Google's search box will give you plenty of proof if you're that interested in seeing it. Just a heads up before anyone does that, everything that Takahashi told TorrentFreak is nothing but a flat-out lie.

The reason why I haven't dumped a long list of links to the Wayback Machine, links to his tweets and to screenshots of his deleted tweets and a bunch of other links is because this thread is not about him and it's a rather pointless thing to do because you've plenty of evidence in TorrentFreak's article.

If Tenboro gives the word and lets us have a thread about him on this forum, I'd be more than happy to do it.
But a fair warning, Takahashi has been spitting out C&D letters to website owners that are hosting images or texts containing anything critical about him.

This post has been edited by ninetydollardoujin: Jul 24 2020, 21:31

a statement on the things people hate about FAKKU will probably go a long way.

This is something that has been on my mind for a really long time, but I'm not sure how to go about it. We have made statements refuting most of not all accusations against us in various AMAs, interviews, and through comments from third parties like artists and other partners. The problem is those statements won't do any good if people construct echo chambers where they only repeat their version of events. Especially when whenever someone brings up a counterargument or even evidence of the contrary, they're called shills, liars, or worse.

I've played around with the idea of creating some sort of repository with rebuttals to all the common accusations against FAKKU, but again, this is only useful if others are willing to point to these answers when false claims are made somewhere on the internet.

P.S. Please make shipping to EU countries affordable, paying more for shipping than the actual book is retarded.

I wish it was more affordable, but no luck so far. Best I can do for now is recommend United Publications, which is a UK based distributer that carries some of our titles.

The regular vigilantes and moderators have been cleaning up the comments section of your uploads just like we do for all galleries when hate, racism, deaths-treats and general stupidity appear.

Believe me, I appreciate the work volunteers do for any fan community, am I'm not upset with your monitoring. It's just that if you're forced to clean up that much crap each time we post something, it doesn't seem like a healthy situation for either party. I don't think this is an issue that will go away with time, and as I mentioned above, there need to be a change in attitudes before we try something like this again. I also recognize that we likely have to be the driving force behind that change if we want to see it happen.

Most galleries were fyorded because of the loli tag. Most traffic will likely come from galleries that can live on the regular site.

I believe part of the idea behind that decision was to debunk the narrative that FAKKU only works on vanilla, but that's a fair point. Although, I don't think our main goal with this experiment was to boost sales, but more so to garner some good will. This is what happened with a subset of the community, so the best you can hope for with a non-fyorded gallery is a bit more positivity, which doesn't negate the deluge of negativity.

The flip side of that though is you do little to stop or dispel it

I've already touched on this, but for the people who thought this was a sign of some aggressive buyout happening behind the scenes, seeing a FAKKU rep popping into the comments and refuting is not going to help. This was just a poorly thought out, spur of the moment stunt, and I think pulling the plug is the best course of action for now.

Piracy through fan translations do bring in sales. Piracy of officially licensed content does not.

I somewhat agree, but I think that's an oversimplification. You could argue the fan translation on its own is fine, but that can only exist if you have access to the RAW, which means piracy of the Japanese release. That's something the Japanese artists and publishers obviously don't appreciate.

I can say that I personally have a lot of sympathy for the fan translation community, with my background and all that. I think there can be symbiosis between that and legal publishing, but it's pretty hard for either side to wholeheartedly embrace the other, for obvious reasons. That said, I'm often pushing for artists I was a fan of during my scanlation period, and one artist I suggested very early on is now a close friend of the company. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of "fan translations are great and artists are lucky they have us" and "scanlators should be shunned and driven off the internet."

I have a lot of opinions on piracy—especially the area of piracy in a non-existent market, like subbed anime 20 years ago—but that's far beyond the scope of this discussion. I do agree that direct copies (Japanese scans or FAKKU rips) are more harmful than derivative works (like translations), but it's not black and white.

while i do understand the decision to halt any future fakku uploads, taking down the existing uploads from fakku (esp. the older one) would only further reinforce the "fakku-only-uploads-here-just-so-they-can-take-down-other-galleries-as-well" conspiracy.

I don't understand the thought process behind this. If DMCA laws were based on a three-strikes-and-you're-out system, this site would not be here today. We don't need to plant dummy galleries in order to DMCA other things.

I get that it's not you saying this, but if a conspiracy is built on a batty foundation, you're better off not paying it any attention. People crazy enough to believe that in the first place will make up justifications no matter what.

A lot of the vitriol is "false anger" type of trolling. That was an observation made on 4chan that people were afraid FAKKU would grow so large that it would basically translate most items. That would mean the low cost or free translations would disappear as all the "good quality" translators would go work for FAKKU. When the doujinshi and manga authors realize the profit is as great or greater than the profits from selling their products in Japan, they would file DMCA (not Fakku, those authors) and stop the items from appearing at e-hentai and elsewhere.

In my opinion, that's the real fear driving the false anger vitriol.

just to elaborate a bit more on my previous post, pulling down the official fakku uploads will only add more fuel to the fire. while taking down your recent uploads probably won't fuel the paranoia that much, a 2015 gallery going poof will certainly do.

actions speak louder than words, if you let these galleries stay, people will eventually realize that fakku is not here to bring the third impact upon us, and (hopefully) come to accept that you guys are just using this site as an advertising platform.

This post has been edited by PrincessKaguya: Jul 24 2020, 21:15

I didn't know anything about this FAKKU debate and I don't know where the banners are, so I guess this doesn't affect me.

I am someone who might buy FAKKU products, as I do buy a lot of physical stuff. However, I will never buy anything from FAKKU because I don't really know who they are. Also, they lack any retailer for their physical stuff. The main retailer I know of is a piece of shit, and I do not do business with them.

This shit anime retailer is a travesty for the anime community as a whole, not just hentai. It's my belief that the whole anime industry in the USA is bottlenecked and damaged by them.

I've played around with the idea of creating some sort of repository with rebuttals to all the common accusations against FAKKU, but again, this is only useful if others are willing to point to these answers when false claims are made somewhere on the internet.

The thing is with something of that nature is that it's only as good as the information contained within. As long as it's well sourced it becomes something that speaks for itself. Arguing against someone pointing to actual properly sourced info is a lot harder than arguing with someone saying the equivalent of "Just trust me". As long as there's something concrete behind what you guys would put in it, it gets a lot harder for people to handwave and say "Well they must be connected/responsible" or whatever the accusation in question would be.

I believe part of the idea behind that decision was to debunk the narrative that FAKKU only works on vanilla, but that's a fair point.

Is that an actual misconception people have? Maybe I spend too much time around smut but I'd figure the fact that you guys work with ShindoL and Asanagi alone would blow that out of the water.

I can say that I personally have a lot of sympathy for the fan translation community, with my background and all that. I think there can be symbiosis between that and legal publishing, but it's pretty hard for either side to wholeheartedly embrace the other, for obvious reasons. That said, I'm often pushing for artists I was a fan of during my scanlation period, and one artist I suggested very early on is now a close friend of the company. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of "fan translations are great and artists are lucky they have us" and "scanlators should be shunned and driven off the internet.

See, this is a lot more of the type of thing I think FAKKU should communicate to people, or at least the community here for obvious reasons. Just the fact that (afaik and unless something has changed while I wasn't paying attention) FAKKU doesn't go and DMCA works that aren't based on/direct FAKKU releases ie fan translations should earn you a lot of goodwill, especially when you contrast with how Irodori/Takahashi treat the community and DMCA everything even tangentially related, which is why I mentioned you guys working with him as a negative in the first place. The point is that the way FAKKU operates and treats the community isn't as bad, at least imo, as the community perceives it, it certainly isn't as bad as Irodori, and there is work that can be done on that front. But it's not something that can be fixed overnight or by posting a couple of doujins out of the blue.

Obviously you're never gonna win over everybody, especially in trying to get them to pay for things they're currently pirating, but you could definitely do better than you're currently doing and I firmly believe that just being more open and communicative would go a long way. But you also have to realize that coming out of nowhere and advertising on the site like there isn't a history and animosity there was a poor way to do so, if there's to be healing it has to be slow and gradual. I think Wayward_Vagabond put it best:

A slow and gentle hand is the way to try and get the masses to not Flip The Fuck Out. The sudden offering with closed ears spooked them. You lobbed a biscuit in a dog's face that didn't trust you before, and seem a bit dumbfounded that it snarled.

Also if this is just gonna be about FAKKU in general you guys need get a payment processor that accepts cryptocurrency. Some of us live in places where it'd be a better bet to not have FAKKU on an official financial statement because the government believes some drawings shouldn't be legal. I probably would of subbed at least once on impulse if that was an option tbqh. Also why is it that no other site can have a tag system as robust as E-Hentai? Even just adding male and female namespaces would improve your UX massively, but I realize that's not something that's trivial to implement. Also I've really digressed too far.

I think sleep deprivation makes me like to write rambling walls of text.

I personally doesn't dislike FAKKU and I think it's a good thing that some of the legal translator sites want to use e-Hentai as their tool for promoting their things. Even if it small scales but I think it can help manga-ka and doujin-ka to make a living and can continue to provide us more hentai stuff.

I'm not sure what makes FAKKU decide to leave from e-Hentai. If it's about comments and ratings, why not ignore it? Or if you want, I'm sure TenB can disable comments and ratings of your galleries. There are a lot of people who hate FAKKU but I'm sure that more people who come here for hentai don't care about it. Well, the stone is already thrown and I just want to give my five cents here.

I hope your previous uploaded galleries aren't taken down because some reasons and one of it is this:

actions speak louder than words, if you let these galleries stay, people will eventually realize that fakku is not here to bring the third impact upon us, and (hopefully) come to accept that you guys are just using this site as an advertising platform.

Or if you want, I'm sure TenB can disable comments and ratings of your galleries

I can say with absolute certainty that even if Tenboro would be willing to do something like that, it would only make things far, far worse.

My understanding of how the rules are written, prohibiting Fakku or anybody that isn't just shitposting from uploading (especially content they have the rights to) would be a violation. I agree with this, and Fakku should be allowed to do as they please with their content- including posting it here if they want.
Comments are entirely meaningless and arbritrary, but taking that away will overclock the rumor mill, and constitute special treatment.
The karma system here had positive and negative sides back in the day. As mad as people got about karma, they got even more mad when the negative side was removed.

Just for the record, you did at least get one sale because of your posts and the banners. From me.

E-Hentai has honored DMCA claims for as long as I can remember

Not out of goodwill and the process is long but they do follow it even for small artist. Thought I'd rather have option to delete my own gallery/orphan it like AO3 or this https://e-hentai.org/g/320776/67831cac28/.

I was just over in the 4chan, in the hentai forum threads. I went to the one that always talks about e-hentai, and boy I was not disappointed. They are spewing the same hatred for Fakku that everyone has been for the last few years. And it seems that they are even blaming them for the take down requests still of all wani stuff. Amazing....

I think E-hentai has done very good for itself, by maintaining a good standing with the sites patrons as well as taking in the requests of the artists and publishers that do not want their stuff posted here. Because if that were not the case then e-hentai would still not be here.