Habbo caught up in child sex scandal / Habbo Mute

[Nick]

Using my motto to talk to people :L

[scottish]

forgot, habbo hotel is the only site to harbor pedophiles

[Hannah]

Yeah she did. The story will change about 1000 more times to make Habbo look even more bad. Probs, lol

I find it hilarious how out of proportion this has become.

However, she was clearly seeking that sort of attention by going to the cyber prone rooms.

[Samantha]

great timing for this to happen as soon as habbo introduce the 'silk gloves are on' campaign message, i actually failed the initial habbo way quiz due to the question about the kissing booth.

Yeah I failed that quiz too, that one about scamming? Imo you should actually report it, you shouldn't just take it on the chin and learn in the future - well you should but that shouldn't be the immediate response.

Wow it's reached Australia? Man this is rather big ;l

---------- Post added 13-06-2012 at 11:27 AM ----------

WHSmith also pulled out? How long before GAME goes with them?

[GommeInc]

Using my motto to talk to people :L

That sort of creative thinking won us the war

It's interesting to read Twitter for more precise and accurate news. Basically this Paul person is missing the point and showing poor leadership skills. He's deluding himself and others with grandeur and false optimism.

He's saying there is no way she got on Habbo as an 11 year old girl because of the 'age gate'. Does he not realise people lie about their age? If they want something so much, they will fake the seemingly harmless age restriction of 13 as an 11 year old and go about their lives on Habbo giving out their actual age (e.g. 11).

He's also saying how 'we' (moderators, Habbos and staff) search for these names and immediately block and delete the rooms - yet why are there features in place like these kissing booths? He's mucking out the horses stable by shovelling the manure in his own front door. He really doesn't have a clue how his community works - it's no wonder Habbo is unsafe and incredibly boring and out of touch. This man is the Chief Executive? I thought they gave up with such useless people when Callie was around. Sulake should sack him, if he keeps his job then he will only work as a cancer - the problem will persist and come back again and again.

I find it hilarious how out of proportion this has become.

However, she was clearly seeking that sort of attention by going to the cyber prone rooms.

She is highlighting how easy it is to find these rooms, so obviously she is seeking them. The producer of the report only wanted to highlight how sexually driven Habbo is, and these rooms were appearing at the top of room lists so anyone could enter. The clear lack of moderation in general is alarming. It's self-induced on both her and Habbo, but for her she knew of the risks while for some they may not.

[Bob1]

http://habbobob.tumblr.com/

Since Habbo has adopted a global mute across its services (even Mini-Mail, in-game events etc) I figured I’d vent my frustrations at the recent Channel 4 report on here, what follows is merely my opinion.

My Habbo name is Bob, I first registered on the UK hotel in 2001 and have “played” on and off since then. As soon as I turned 16 I applied to become a Hobba and from there I went to intern as staff at the Canadian hotel, I’ve worked in Player Support, I worked closely with teams of Hobbas and MODs providing training for most hotels and helping with the up-keep of training manuals and policy guidelines worldwide.

Since 2001 Habbo has changed vastly, I stopped working for Sulake in 2007 and it’s focus has shifted on more than one occasion since then. Though I would not say Habbo Hotel ever had a spotless reputation in terms of moderation, it always had it’s ups and downs, teens will be teens and these sites obviously become a target. 2001-2004 the site had it’s teething problems, the main focus was improving safety, from 2004 onwards problems were dealt with as swiftly as possible but they were actually dealt with, rules were actually enforced and moderation was sufficient.

I was shocked at how that level of service has degraded over the period since 2008-2012, where the service once seemed to be taking leaps forward to strive for a safer environment this now appeared to have been put on the back burner and thus the service began to tumble backwards. I believe at the heart of this is the move from a community team of volunteers and paid staff to the faceless out-sourcing of customer care, what was once a system that, at it’s core, had fantastic teams of personable and hard-working individuals seemed to have been dropped in order to cut costs. As Habbo itself is essentially one large or lots of little intertwined communities this move confused me, as did employing staff who were not game users, if you have no experience or interest in the product, if there is no sense of community, if the companies goals become muddied, how can the product be effectively provided? It seemed to me Sulake had decided to abandon high levels of service and security in order to offer what they saw to be a more marketing friendly product, integrated into other social media (something I always thought was a bad move having witnessed online harassment/bullying as part of my job, to me it just provided another weapon and made predatory behaviour more difficult to contain), with relaxed rules to encourage more teens with disposable income.

The extensively exhausting customer service interfaces for reporting behaviour in-game or lodging a problem through the main site and lukewarm responses that are mostly scripted, automated replies from moderators who seem to have been to be lenient to avoid banning potential pounds/dollars, rules that were made not to be enforced but to allude to safety and when broken held little consequence all contributed to this problem. I myself had problems with my account and after 2 months and a lot of auto-responses received no help; to me it seemed clear the quite drastic repositioning of a moderation system that on the whole worked relatively well previously was not the way forward, though the tools may of remained the same the ethos was not. Technologically the tools are probably better than anything we had to use ‘back in the day’, I question their application. This stems from a lack of manpower, caused by cost cuts, caused by a focus on bottom line.

While every business model has to mature, and the eventual abolishment of volunteer “Hobbas” was inevitable in order to offer a more efficient and professional service across its portfolio, it’s ridiculous for a business to lose focus on its roots, on its core offering. The moderation is now a faceless, corporate, standardised system beyond belief to counteract the cuts and changes, it does not appear to be a team working together with the community but button pushing mindless automatons.

Channel 4’s recent news report highlights severe problems with online games and services that are advertised at children solely as profit generating tools rather than providing secure environments to the parents who are entrusting their children’s safety to them, in my eyes the companies operating these sites have a duty of care to their consumers to ensure with the best possible effort that their consumers are safe first and foremost, this should naturally drive revenue.

Reportedly Sulake’s board of directors, on which a now former major investor sat, were given the opportunity to read the report before it’s airing on Channel 4 and it was their passive response that caused the investor to pull out. While it is arguable the report was sensationalised to make it news worthy and it is obvious all similar services face these problems it is how they deal with them, even now as all the Habbo sites enter 3 and a half hours of mute the response reeks of window dressing, damage limitation, adding further distance between the moderation and the community rather than a radical alteration of attitude and policy that is clearly needed to actually address a problem that could keep getting bigger. My suggestion is Habbo look to the past, remember that community is at its core, to move forward.

Becs, Ione, Aapo and Sampo must be turning in their metaphorical Habbo-graves.

Threads merged by Jordan (Forum Super Moderator): As same topic

[sex]

No way did you really write that? I searched Habbo on Tumblr last night and came across this, it was a really good read! You should write for HX News or something . I loveee the last line so much ~!!

[Samantha]

No way did you really write that? I searched Habbo on Tumblr last night and came across this, it was a really good read! You should write for HX News or something . I loveee the last line so much ~!!

Thanks Grayham, that gave me the need to advertise that News Applications are open woo!

Anyway, I enjoyed that read, didn't read it all but came back on to see the reply. I liked that line too even though I wasn't there for them really!

[Kardan]

I'm quite shocked to see that some people think that the global mute is pointless, and that some people can't understand why it's still muted.

The hotel will stay under a mute until Sulake decide how they're going to combat the problem.

[wixard]

hiya bob

gd read