For years, I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with MangaDex and with uploading my scans there. What began with the massive purge in May of last year only spiraled into further uncertainty once they started operating alongside NamiComi. At that point, uploading required us to tick a little box claiming we had authorization or permission to upload titles. Obviously, 95% of the groups checking that box were lying out of their arses, but there was never any real effort to enforce it.
More recently, I was blocked from uploading because I run a Patreon account, which they now consider a violation of a new subclause enacted back in December. Highly selective in their application of it, that rule states that a user may not “use the Site as part of any effort to compete with us or otherwise use the Site and/or the Content for any revenue-generating endeavor or commercial enterprise.” (Cute how this clause is cut and paste from like a metric crapton of other legalise sites)
Basically, this started with a claim that I was “hoarding” material because I did not upload it right away. Fair enough, I took entirely too long to sit my butt down and finish putting together a compilation volume, and I can admit that the timing looked suspicious when another group had already started on it by the time I dumped everything. Still, despite having Patreon and donation pages linked across all my releases for years, it took one user report for that to suddenly become a problem, and I was blocked from any further uploads.
I’m not going to bother jumping through all the hoops for an “appeal.” From what I’ve gleaned, it’s honestly not worth the time or effort, and I don’t see them allowing me back anyway. More than that, I have no interest in bowing to a corporate mandate and its selective enforcement of contradictory rules. Maybe that is not the most elegant way to put it, but it is what it is. I’m not going to let a corporate entity dictate what I can and cannot do with my translation work, especially when everything gets released publicly in the end.
What makes this sting even more is that MangaDex grew off the backs of scanlator releases, only to start posturing as “legitimate” once that community work had already made the site valuable. If they truly wanted to go fully legal, then a real purge should have happened by now. Instead, they seem content to sit in the middle, benefiting from the traffic and value fan work creates while selectively enforcing rules when it suits them.
Alternatives for scans will be Comix, MangaFire or Mangadotnet. DDLs will be available on my Discord channel, and you can also keep up with release announcements on either Twitter or Bluesky.
April 22nd, 2026 
deackychu 
