Gaga's notable omission from MDL
I'm working on a post in response to a discussion that has sprung up about Gaga's announcement that they plan to start using AI-generated subtitles for certain languages. I'll have that up pretty soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to post about something that came up in that discussion.
@wei-ying-kexing-apologist noted in their contribution to that conversation that references to GagaOOLaLa as a potential source for watching QL series are consistently absent from MyDramaList. I hadn't noticed this before, and I found it really interesting. I don't actually think it's very pertinent to the subtitle discussion, for reasons that I'll talk about below. But I do think it's important.
The fact that this omission is so consistent (even 25 ji Akasaka de, a Gaga co-production, doesn't list them as a potential place to watch that series!) suggests some kind of official (but not publicly stated) policy on the part of MDL. A lot of the information on that site comes from fans, but it isn't always reflective of fan sentiment. Important parts of the listings for each show, including the section at the top of each page that lists places to watch a series, seem to be controlled by the people running the site, or at least to involve limited options for fan contributors that have been set by site administrators. If you look at the comments on any listing of a QL series that airs on Gaga, you'll almost always find someone mentioning that it's available there, so site users are still talking about that platform. They just aren't able to get that information into the main listing at the top of a show's page. And that matters! Knowledgeable MDL users know to look beyond the information at the top of each page, but more casual ones are unlikely to do so. If they see that they can watch a show on another platform, such as iQiyi, and don't see Gaga listed, they'll be more likely to use the other platform. This is likely to have an appreciable effect on Gaga's bottom line.
Given all of this, I don't think Gaga's omission from those listings is at all reflective of a lack of respect for Gaga in the QL fan community (which was @wei-ying-kexing-apologist's stated basis for mentioning it in relation to the subtitle discussion). It seems far more likely that there's a policy in place at MDL that is excluding them from being listed as a streaming source. I'm particularly convinced of the likelihood of this because when I did a search of the MDL forums for posts mentioning GagaOOLaLa, I found numerous posts requesting that Gaga be added as an "approved viewing site/channel" but whenever I clicked a link that would take me to those posts, I was sent to either a "page not found" message or a page with nothing whatsoever on it. The fact that those posts were partially scrubbed also raises the question of how many other posts may have been entirely deleted so that they didn't show up in my search.
It makes sense that MDL would have a policy about which sites can be officially listed as sources for watching a series. If they didn't, people could post links to any gray site on the internet, and MDL could be implicated in piracy, something with potential legal consequences. But it's clear that they've refused to list Gaga as a legitimate source despite requests from numerous site users and despite its being completely legal and above-board. They're even deleting people's request posts asking for the site to be added. That's downright suspicious.
I'll hold off on speculating here about the reasons this might be the case. Suffice it to say that there are plenty of possibilities that come to mind given political considerations involving Taiwan and perhaps even their specific LGBTQ+ focus. But I don't think I have sufficient background knowledge to comment in detail about either of those possibilities.
You could make a case that all of this is still pertinent to the subtitle discussion, in a way. For example, you could say that since Gaga is already at a disadvantage because of this MDL policy, we should make even more of an effort to support them and overlook it when they engage in practices we disagree with. But personally, I remain convinced that this isn't something we should put much focus on when we look at the subtitle issue. That's not to downplay the importance of the problem. In fact, it's worth asking whether we should consider applying the kinds of pressure to MDL regarding their Gaga policy that folks have discussed applying to Gaga regarding their subtitle policy. MDL users have already tried going through the channels they're supposed to use and have been resoundingly ignored. Maybe it's time for other tactics.
