Just last night, UK’s Channel 4 aired an investigative piece about Sulake’s Habbo Hotel (or just “Habbo”), the social virtual environment for kids.
The investigation alleges (among other things) that sexual predators are using the service to groom children for sex, despite Habbo’s couple of hundred live moderators – and it isn’t the first time these sorts of allegations have been made about Habbo, or about a number of other virtual environments.
Another UK channel (that I won’t name) went so far as to fabricate a scandal involving Second Life a few years ago.
What strikes me about the Habbo incident is how sudden it has been.
Now, if you watch a lot of super-late-night television in Australia, it’s hard not to be at least aware of Habbo. Its slightly sexy adverts exhort attractive adults in their 20’s or so to come to Habbo for fun and socialising. The ads were (when I saw them) sandwiched in between the usual dross of phone-sex service ads. I always thought that was a bit odd, since (as far as I know) Habbo’s marketed very differently everywhere else in the world.
Until I actually went to work for AOL (at Second Life Insider, and later at Massively) I had no idea that Habbo was supposed to be for kids. Golly, was I ever surprised!
Anyway, digressions aside, back to the story. In the few hours since Channel 4’s segment went to air, the retailers Tesco, GAME, and WH Smith have all announced that they’re dropping sales of the Habbo game cards, Venture capital firm Balderton has pulled out of Sulake, Sulake’s CEO has attempted damage control with a blog post, and then Sulake has simply switched off the ability for Habbo’s quarter of a billion users to even talk to each-other… until further notice.
Whoa, that was fast. Frighteningly fast. Everything’s gone from business as usual to… well, Habbo seems to be reeling, and about to fall out of the ring.
I’d give Sulake/Habbo two chances in five of folding at this point. That’s how dizzying the pace of this has been. Obviously 225 live moderators isn’t nearly enough. Can Sulake even afford to dig itself out of this hole and sustain a business?
And if not, where do all those people go? And who might the next environment be to fall?
Pool’s closed!
Thanks for the background. It will be interesting to see what happens. Just goes to show how easily it can all go belly up.
I don’t know anything about Habbo, but I’m thinking I should build myself an OSGRID node just in case….
They had 225 live moderators? Good grief! What was their pricing/payment model? SL doesn’t even begin to have that many live humans attempting to regulate and oversee user-to-user communications and don’t even start about disputes. The pricing model for SL doesn’t have any room in it to pay those people. How could Habbo/Sulake afford it in theirs? Was it that much more expensive? (Can you tell I’m a total neophyte as regards Habbo?)
Item sales and just sheer volume of users.
Looks like Habbo has been circling the drain for a while, if the Habbo subreddit is anything to go by:
http://www.reddit.com/r/habbo/comments/r9sxb/is_habbo_coming_to_an_end/
This is a really interesting contrast to the response EA gave when Urizinus Skalar did an expose on underage prostitution on the sims online and also the response LL gave when similar things were exposed in SL by the american media.
I’m guessing there is more to this than just sex. They were probably failing before this happened due to unwanted ‘feature’ changes.
“Another UK channel (that I won’t name) went so far as to fabricate a scandal involving Second Life a few years ago.”
You’re not, perchance, referring to a satellite broadcaster that is currently at the centre of a major government-related row in the UK & which is the “baby” of a family-run media empire that is also the subject of an on-going enquiry into its relationships with various politicians / parties over here, are you?
If so, then the allegations to which I think you are referring were actually repeated by said organisation on their website very recently.
I think a lawyer would advise me not to comment on that, so you’ll pardon me if I don’t, I hope.
Hence the circuitous route taken with the question. I will say no more.
Good of Faux News / Robber Murderodoc…
See I’m a Yankee, I can call him out.
Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch.
Lies, lies, lies.
/shakes copy of US Constitution’s 1st amendment written on original hemp at the dark sith lord.
Heh.
They got me for a sec there though. Browser froze and crashed on posting that. The dark side of the farce done zapped me. Now I can’t edit it to change that super sized youtube into something reasonable. Hopefully this will ‘reconnect me’.
I did some more digging, just because I can’t resist rubbernecking at a digital train wreck like this (and I hate to admit it but that is probably the same reason I still play SL). Anyway, here is what I found:
They did a lot of things that users hated, adding ‘features’ and changing the interface and merging different regions and adding a second in world currency and then pulling it. They also opened a marketplace (sound familiar?). They probably implemented a lot of these ‘features’ when they changed from shockwave to flash? Hard to tell, I’m piecing bits and pieces of conversations together and trying to make a time line of events that makes sense, so any of these ‘facts’ might be off. I think Sulake sold Habbo a while back? There was reference to an ownership change in the subreddit.
The biggest problem for Habbo, though, is that this expose is only half told right now! There is a second part coming up on the news tonight!
http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=750939&p=7565376#post7565376
If this were an earlier time, I’d expect to see a “Habbo” themed SL last name and a “welcome Habbo refugees” sim coming online…
Truly. This year, though, it might be too hot a potato to touch.
Right, especially as long as some people would love to milk Linden Lab over copyright infringements.
A company is being bullied into the edge of going out of busyness ’cause parents didn’t do their job?
And not for the first time – or the last.
Apparently all of Habbo has been muted from 9:20pm CET (Central European Time) – http://i50.tinypic.com/2dbm4wo.png and http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/351746/20120613/habbo-hotel-suspends-chat-paedophiles-online-investigation.htm
Channel 4′s report has been reposted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5kUZ3pk4TI&feature=related. It does seem very worrying.
I’m wondering now if the noob who hit NCI Kuula today was working for a TV sting. But there are always new AVs who want sex.
It’s not looking quite so sudden from here in the UK. There have been a couple of recent news stories about gangs of abusers, and then this news story from the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18422204
That’s a report of evidence given by a senior government official to a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. I’m not sure from the text if the evidence was given on the 12th or the 13th June.
I’ve a suspicion the timing of the reports may have been intended as political manipulation. Note that the BBC story includes lurid claims of gang-rapes by 10-year-old boys, which implies that children-only net locations cannot be considered safe for children.
It would not surprise me if there turned out to be elements of racism and class-hatred in the stories: sexually perverse foreigners, and other groups who are not like us.
This has frightening echoes of the Satanic Ritual Child Abuse scare of some twenty years ago.
The London Times did an exposé on Habbo a decade ago, characterizing it as an online hotel where little girls would prostitute themselves, having cybersex in exchange for in-game chairs and carpets. I think they missed the bit about the virtual pimps who kept most of the furniture, though
When the Times story broke, Habbo didn’t mute everyone. What they did then was make cybersex against the rules, effective immediately, with no warning, punished by banning. Up until that point, the kiddies were cybering away in the open (and in open chat — I was always having to kick youngsters out of my room for their uninvited exhibitions, which were usually funny as heck — trying to be so hawt as they attempted to describe stuff they’d never seen or done).
Do they have paid moderators now? Back in the day, it was almost all volunteers, and some of them were as young as fourteen themselves.
I kinda hoped, with all the corporate sponsorship they’d picked up and etc. that it might be an indication that they’d cleaned the place up, but sounds as if it’s the same old cesspool.
This sort of thing has come up over and over, every year for – well, a decade or so, as you say.
Suddenly, things are different and people are reacting drastically. Odd.
Well, I think maybe it has to do with online tech of this sort becoming more established in the mainstream.
Years ago, I contacted authorities about a situation involving kids online which I found bad enough that I felt bound to report it. First, I had to spend about three days on the phone, getting transferred around, until they figured out whose jurisdiction it might be. And I had to try to explain the situation. Imagine trying to explain a site like Habbo or SL to someone who had never played a computer game, at an agency that was apparently entirely focused on catching people who were exchanging child porn online. They asked questions like, “Why would anyone pay for a picture of a chair?” The folks I talked with couldn’t log in and see what I was telling them about, as most websites were blocked on their work computers and they weren’t allowed any plugins. How were they supposed to investigate anything? I don’t think they could. They just weren’t set up for it.
Now, though, things are different. Maybe enough people are now aware enough to understand the situation, and authorities have the tools and authority to do more. It might be that Habbo just reached that tipping point. The video linked above shows and describes exactly the kinds of activities that were a constant occurrence on Habbo when I used it. The only thing that surprises me is that it’s been allowed to go on this long. If things really still are the way they used to be, after all this time, I think there should be some criminal prosecutions of Habbo for advertising a safe place for kids while it was full of kiddie cyber prostitution and junior fraudsters
I think you may be right. Mind you, teen/kid venues seem to be favoured places for minors wanting to exchange prurient material. I draw your attention to this short piece I wrote on the topic a little under two years ago.
I remember when I was a kid, and the stuff that floated around school. And some of the rather tall tales that some told. I never did know whether to believe them.
They didn’t panic and close the schools (worse luck).
When I was in school, some of the other kids shoved a romance novel in my bag. I don’t know the title, because the covers and opening and closing pages had been torn off. In case you’re unfamiliar with women’s romance novels, many of them are … well, porn with a story. Don’t let the cheesy covers fool you, some of it is very strong material.
I discovered the book among my things because I’d forgotten a notebook and had to return to my bag. Eyeballed it a bit to determine the contents, and decided it was prudent to get rid of it in the nearest rubbish bin. Got back to class a little late. Halfway through the class, staff and teachers suddenly announced that everyone’s property would be searched for “inappropriate material”. Several people in my class who were particularly unfond of me looked right at me at this point – the perpetrators, I figured. Everyone’s bags and lockers were searched. A variety of things turned up, and these particular students seem angered that I hadn’t been collared for “inappropriate material”.
I presume they must have gotten wind of the search ahead of time and planted it. Still, that was decades ago and in a State where you couldn’t even buy a Playboy magazine (let alone anything stronger), and there was hardly any shortage at all of porn available to high-school students at that time.
Perhaps they were the ones that tipped the authorities after planting the incriminating evidence?
The thought had crossed my mind. I was about that popular.
It doesn’t have to be about your “social status”, some kids (and even some grown ups) do things like that just ’cause they’re a tad damaged up there.
I always thought that the metaphor of a hotel with rooms containing functional beds for two was a pretty piss poor choice for a supposedly safe site just for kids. Obviously, any adult with a brain in their head is going to know just what the little darlings will do in those beds, and what kind of predators that setting would be especially prone to attract.
Most of the cybering going on in Habbo, when I still visited it, was underaged kids giggling and evading the cuss filter and role playing they were strippers or newlyweds. Much better than setting them loose in a real hotel without enough chaperones, and really not a big deal from my point of view, but there are plenty of parents who feel otherwise.
But I also encountered, repeatedly, situations that appeared to involve alleged adults allegedly paying alleged children to perform cybersex on themselves or their alleged customers. I don’t know anyone who would shrug off adult pimps with strings of child phone sex workers, do you? It was nothing like one kid sticking a dirty book in another kid’s backpack. Anyway, it is very old news, and I investigated what I could and reported it all back then, including the associated alleged blackmail and alleged credit card fraud. Presumably Habbo and the authorities took it from there.
Again, this is very old news, not recent Habbo experience. As I said, I haven’t visited that place in years now, and hoped it had been cleaned up. I hope investigators find that there’s nothing more going on in there than kids playing doctor. But I wouldn’t assume it.
Oops, double post. Sorry!
What is so scary to me is not the unusual advertising you saw on TV, when compared to how the rest of the world regarded Habbo, but the swiftness of the outcome.
If Linden Lab were to do something similar, real people would commit suicide. And Big Mainstream Media would tut-tut but love it quietly, because they’d have a big story and really hate these environments as up-and-coming competitors to their passive content and 20th-Century business models.
SL isn’t promoted specifically as an online community for kids, and when they did have the Teen Grid the security measures were extreme and effective. Plus, when you log into SL and visit a public gathering space you aren’t mobbed with underaged kids inviting you to cyber. See, if Habbo is like it used to be when I last visited, that’s what would greet worried parents who saw the news and decided to check it out (just like in that video) — unless all chat was shut off. I don’t think Linden Lab would ever need to do something similar.
SL was in trouble back in 2007 (as far as i can recall), when some german TV station broadcasted a report on child porn on the main grid. This gained a LOT of attention because SL was inmidst of a global hype , anyway. One can only speculate over the true impact, but it certainly was all but helpful for developing SL for business and education. And if Linden Lab would have been located in certain european countries, this might have lead to closure.
We should not feel too safe, folks.
There have been reports of child porn arrests in the UK, nothing apparently to do with this case, and various other alarming evidence presented to the Home Affairs Committee. How much the timing of the news report was “arranged” I wouldn’t care to guess, but it coukld be either stirring up bigger trouble than it might, or be getting lost in the noise.
One recent story: investors are bailing out.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/investors_leave_habbo_hotel/
Commenters on that article have wondered how anybody can get anything for the stock when we’re talking 29% of the total, even if it is being privately traded.
The BBC report today concentrated on claims that budget cuts were coming at just the wrong time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18428289
The legitimate users of Habbo are what we used to call teenagers. Now, whenever anything untoward is found, it’s “Think of the children!”
Has anyone else started getting Habbo themed spam/phishing emails recently?
It’s alright to say “company blamed for parents’ failure” but what Channel 4 is doing, is informing the parents so they can take their responsibility, and nothing else.
Habbo is an environment for kids. It is the responsibility of parents to know what their kids are doing. It is the responsibility of the parent company to at least try and keep 31 year olds like Sam Bensemann ( http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSamBensemann ) out of the playpen with the kids.
Latest news at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/habbo_great_unmute/
It looks as though Habbo is carrying on. The article reports that the company would like to see some industry-wide standards, differences in local laws confuse people, and makes some comments on the number of journalists who have been prowling around and offering money for info on inappropriate behaviour.
“Sulake is suggesting that there should be a shared understanding and subscription to a clear and agreed international standard of best practice for social and online gaming communities.”
Of course, local laws still apply as they always do, whether or not there is such a standard. Usually, these standards are called “Terms of Service”.
This is interesting:
“Habbo Hotel parent Sulake has got in touch with The Reg on Monday 18 June to say that the “Great Unmute” may not take place on the actual Habbo Hotel site. “The Great Unmute will be an event for Habbo users, but may take place on a different media channel to the actual Habbo site,” the firm said.”
So they are not unmuting Habbo yet?
I think it means that Habbo/Habbo-users are going to have some sort of media campaign.
This is the best explanation I found for what happened in Habbo. It’s from an ex-moderator (or at least somebody claiming to be an ex-moderator).
http://habbobob.tumblr.com/
It looks like their product’s value was based on trust created with excellent customer service, then they let the customer service go to hell and the entire thing started to collapse. Is there a lesson for LL in all of this? Maybe the lesson is that you can create a lot of value if you invest in customer service (Habbo was massive), but that investment needs constant maintenance (Habbo fell to around 6k in world, on average, near the end).
Habbo is unmuting in a gradual way in Finland, Spain and Brazil. Not so much a ‘great unmute’, more a sneaky reopening. See http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/25/habbo-hotel-kids-social-network-reopens-for-business-post-pedophile-scandal-spain-brazil-finland-first-up/.
Non English-speaking countries: it is tempting to think they want to keep out snoopers from the UK, though it wouldn’t be hard to find Spanish-speakers in the USA.
It’s sort of interesting that they are the big markets.
A quick check of Age of Consent Laws, which are about the only easy-to-check guide although not really relevant to a virtual world, indicates that Spain and Brazil set a much lower age-limit than the USA. And they should know the limits in Finland. So they’re trialling the new measure in places less open to self-righteous snooper, and a bit less likely to get worked up about the issues.
Am I being cynical?