Batoto
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Bato.to, Batoto |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Grumpy |
| Dates: | 21 January 2011 - 18 January 2018 |
| Type: | scanlation site, forums |
| Fandom: | manga |
| URL: | bato.to (current owners of bato.to domain are not affiliated with Batoto[1] |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
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Bato.to was the first manga aggregate site built with the intents and needs of scanlation groups in mind.[2] Whereas other manga aggregate sites would exploit scanlators by stealing translated manga chapters from scanlators' personal sites, removing their credits pages, and showing them with ads to profit off traffic, Batoto was created with the express intent of returning 100% of whatever revenue they made to scanlation groups who chose to opt-into payment. It closed in late January 2018 due to Grumpy, the site's founder and owner, losing the will to maintain the site.[3] It was spiritually succeeded by MangaDex.[4]
Alongside an online manga reader, Batoto also hosted its own forums, as well as subforums for scanlation groups who didn't want to set up their own hosting. They also had an IRC channel in the idlechat.net server, a choice made deliberately over the more common IRC servers for scanlation groups, Rizon and IRCHighway, because it supported chat through Adobe Flash.[5]
The site also had a running gag/in-joke about potatoes, as forum members were given member labels based off different types of potatoes and had potato-themed April Fool's Day jokes.[6]
History
Born from the forums originally opened by Grumpy for his scanlation group, "The Company",[7] Bato.to opened as a manga reader aggregate site on 21 January 2011 to compete with other aggregator sites like Mangafox, MangaHere, and MangaToshokan,[2] sites which already had a bad reputation in the manga scanlation community due to the amount of revenue they made by reposting fan scans and lack of respect they had for requests to not do that.[8]
The site received several DDoS attacks through the years,[9] and eventually, the site was shut down due to declining human usage and increased bot traffic.[3]
References
- ^ All that's left of Batoto is vatoto.com
- ^ a b Grumpy. A new site! Batoto!, posted 21 January 2011 to Batoto Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ a b Grumpy. Batoto will be closing permanently, posted 7 January 2018 to Batoto Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ Hologfx. "New site like batoto" (pg. 5), posted on 16 January 2018 at Batoto Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ Batoto chat
- ^ Welcome to Potato High School!, posted 1 April 2014 at Batoto Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ Grumpy. Forum Created!!, posted 23 September 2010. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ cmertb. A Tale of Two Manga Readers, posted 4 August 2011 at Baka-Updates Manga Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)
- ^ Grumpy. DDoS - Aftermath (2014/02/16), posted 17 February 2014 at Batoto Forums. (Accessed 20 May 2022.)