You misinterpreted what our dev said. They said they didn't know we were going legit, because the comment assumption was that MangaDex was actively planning to go legit.

Nothing about "actively" there, there was complete denial.

A dev admits the talks about going legit were no secret enters in complete contradiction with saying he/she didn't knew about going legit.

You can't know about the talks about going legit while saying that they didn't knew about them.

Also, that all staff comments after some pages are edited automatically makes their stance VERY dubious.

For all we know they were saying "yup, 100% real, we are planning going legit!" and then edited to "lol it's a smear campaign!!!!".