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The Platform For Teens That Endorsed Racism

The story of the leading virtual community for teens, Habbo- an Azerion company and how they officially endorsed users who publically expressed hatred and racistic messages.

By Peter HookPublished 3 years ago 2 min read
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The #SaveHabbo Movement

For those of you who are less familiar with the game, which became rather prominent within recent years for their lack of child care and protection of younger users; featuring an investigation by Channel4 Habbo is a global virtual community, targetting teens. In August 2014 Habbo was subject to a mass investigation by Channel4, which exposed the vulnerability of young users to potential child predators. This was extremely prominent throughout the digital industry, marking an important lesson for the importance of user security and protection. This led to the 'Great Mute', as referred to by users, which saw the game enter a lockdown, so to say, in which all users were unable to speak to one another, notiably an essentially aspect of any social media. None the less more recently Habbo has undergone growing media attention through the means of the Economist, Wired Magazine and the New York Times, in which Habbo was exposed for the #SaveHabbo movement and the lack of support from their userbase, following the release of their new update named 'Habbo2020', in response to the closure of Flash, which the game previously ran on.

As a result, of a lack of communication, and drastic changes of the game, founded in 2000 in Finland the industry was left at a loose end, underwhelmed by a hyped release which infact saw staple features, such as trading removed. Therefore, the player base, led a movement which was notiable primarily on Twitter (#SaveHabbo), this occured throughout late 2020, and early 2021, in which the movement trended in multiple nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Canada and other notiable nations, as the player base of over 5 million promoted backlash against the cooperation and their monrisation plans. Quakityhq, the well-followed Twitch streamer also helped to increase exposure for the movement, primarily to ex-Habbo players, his stream on the topic reached over 2 million live views.

In order to increase engagement from the community Habbo has a historic 'official fansite programme' which empowers the community into creating fandoms, based around the game. The official fansite programme allows leading fansites, as determined by the game to recieve official recognised, and endorsement from the game, through the means of ingame virtual goods, promotions as well as promotion via Habbo's social medias. As a result Habbo has recieved vast critism for the general structure of the scheme, which has been called 'unfair', 'bias' and 'unrepresentative of the community' on multiple occasions. However, in 2013 Habbo made a fansite named 'HabboKingdom' an official fansite, led by two independent individuals on a not-for-profit basis (similarly to most fansites). However, 8 years later and the very same user has recieved vast critism for racist comments, which have recieved vast exposer, and notiably the user has now been banned from creating official fansites. However, his fansite was awarded official status for over two years, in which Habbo officially endorsed his community and his comments.

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