And despite the obviously annoying optics of the pristine white family trying to play hero with an Asian/African/other child and failing, I think folks need to chill with the auto-judgement that they just flippantly "gave up" and treated the kid like a pet.

Hopefully they're being truthful when they say that they found a far better family situation for the kid. If things were really volatile and untenable in their household for the child and the adopting family, then it's better longterm for both parties if they truly did their homework and found a better situation for him to thrive.

Full disclosure, I'm adopted and went through a semi-similar situation as an infant so I have some experience/expertise (and bias) on this type of situation.

That said, the one thing that gives me pause is the fact that she was making money off of this whole thing. Which (1) leaves her open to this criticism because she shared her story so openly, and (2) means, to me, that maybe she should consider giving some of the money that was donated back to the folks who donated it. Or perhaps better yet she should donate it all to a similar organization to hopefully help other children.