I want to highlight a situation that happened on a less well-known website that is all too similar to what’s going on with Reddit at the moment.
The website Habitica is a retro RPG-themed website for self-improvement and habit formation. As users tick boxes off their to-do lists, their character gains experience, gold, and items. Social features are a major part of the site, with “guilds” which are larger public or private groups built around topics like health, career, or education, and “parties” small, private groups which complete in-game quests together. I’ve been an active user of the site for years, and it has been a great help in tracking and completing goals in my life like language learning. It’s also worth noting that like Imgur and Discord, Habitica was born on Reddit.
Another major aspect of Habitica was its positive and welcoming atmosphere. Habitica’s moderators went above and beyond to delete mean-spirited and trolling comments around the clock. Unbeknownst to myself and others, these moderators were volunteers who gave up hours out of their day for years to keep the site running smoothly, particularly when the site admins were off the clock (Habitica’s mods operate site-wide; its parallel to Reddit’s mods are called “guild leaders”). Not only were mods not paid, one also developed a very helpful 3rd party tool for managing guilds and “challenges”.
One weekend a few months ago the mod team discovered an exploit which could have cost the company thousands of dollars in premium paid memberships. The mods caught this quickly and worked overtime to prevent this exploit from being publicized until admins came into work on Monday to fix it. After suggesting mods should be thanked for all their hard work, a long time mod turned paid admin was unceremoniously fired. In response, the moderators unanimously decided to go on strike. They, too, were let go. Thereafter any discussion of what has happened has been removed from public guilds, leaving many users in the dark about the whole situation. Since that time Habitica has been a shell of its former self. Behind the mask of positivity and community, was hiding yet another Silicon Valley private venture which only cares about the bottom line.
More details can be found here:
I didn’t know that, habitica seemed like one of those silly and fun places on the internet that managed to make it in these days of commodifying everything. I am sad to hear trust and community was taken advantage of again