The Great Unmute-The 24 hour countdown begins
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It must seem like a long time since you last spoke to your Habbo friends, but rest assured we haven’t been wasting time since the site fell silent.
The Channel Four News report in the UK about inappropriate interaction on the site saddened me for two reasons. Not only was I deeply concerned to hear about the findings, I was also sorry that the report made no mention of the millions of responsible users who have a positive and constructive experience on our site.
For a full week since Channel Four’s report went on air, my team has worked tirelessly to create the best possible solutions to the challenges we face from a small minority. Now it’s time to allow our loyal and legitimate users a brief chance to have their say before we finalise our plans for Habbo’s future.
For six hours tomorrow (Wednesday), starting at 14:00 UK time, a new and separate website called ‘The Great Unmute’ will open and allow you all to post your thoughts and feelings in a way never seen before in social media. Once the uploading closes, the site will be re-secured as a testament to the many positive experiences the Habbo community has created.
It’s your chance to tell me what I can do to improve the community. You have my word, my team and I will be reading every comment, looking at every picture and watching every video clip. My commitment to you right now is to deliver the safest possible user experience. I understand that means listening to you at this critical moment if I am going to get it right. I feel strongly that it is the right thing to do to make sure your views are heard.
It is also a moment where the world will be watching us, listening carefully to our conversations to understand what our community means to us. The Habbo community is a creative and dynamic environment, but we have never allowed the uploading of visual content before. This has always been a key element of our efforts to protect the safety of our users. That’s why The Great Unmute is a chance to get creative in new ways; the site will allow multimedia content, giving users a real chance express their views in a responsible way with a watching world. Users below the age of 18 should check with their parents before uploading multimedia content.
As the world media stops talking ABOUT us and takes a brief moment to listen TO us, I want us to demonstrate why we are proud of our community. The Habbo site has always been about interacting, sharing news and views and making new friends in a controlled and constructive environment. This is what we’re going to show with a single voice in a wave of innovative content.
When we open The Great Unmute I am going to ask you to answer at least one of the following questions with your posts:
· What does your community mean to you?
· How do you feel about the recent news?
· How can we improve the site in the future?
I would also like to extend the invitation to parents of users to visit the site and watch our conversations. This marks the start of Habbo working closely with parents and users together, sharing a collective responsibility to deliver a safe and secure social experience for our global community of teenagers and young people.
After the Great Unmute, my team and I will need to spend a little time looking at the content you submit to make sure I come back with a final plan to deliver the community you want. But rest assured the reopening of the Habbo community is not far away. In the meantime, again my thanks to the millions of loyal users who are continuing to support us through these challenging times.
News and Views from Paul LaFontaine
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I would like to take this opportunity to reassure the many concerned parents who have been following the news in recent days. Our commitment to the future of the Habbo community is also a commitment to working with the parents of our site users. We believe that a comprehensive safety programme can only be delivered by close collaboration with users and parents together.
As soon as we saw the Channel Four News report on Tuesday evening, we took the decision to mute all conversations across the site. This has had a massive business impact, but the safety of our users is non-negotiable. We must maintain our focus on the quality of interaction within the Habbo community, and not the quantity of visits we receive.
Since conversations on the site were muted, we have experienced an unprecedented online response with thousands of loyal users remaining active on the site, holding a silent candle-lit vigil to express their support for Habbo. During this time, senior management and world leading technologists are working tirelessly in our Helsinki headquarters to ensure that we deliver the best possible protection to the millions of teenagers and young people who regularly visit our site.
We want to work with our users to define and deliver a fully protected environment as well as a creative user experience. That’s why I am announcing “The Great Unmute”. It’s going to provide a chance for our users to create a conversational tidal wave, telling us what they want and showing the world that our global community contains millions of responsible and proud users who have a positive experience on our site. More details will follow in the coming days.
We would like to thank Channel Four for initiating a global debate around this incredibly serious issue. It has provided a global wake-up call for both my company and our poorly regulated industry and we fully intend to actively participate in finding a regulatory solution that will protect our users and ensure the long-term reputation and future of the social gaming community.
However, I do not condone the recent practice of journalists contacting Habbo users and offering cash to share any inappropriate interactions they may have encountered on the site. If there are individuals who have been affected by inappropriate conversations, they may well be vulnerable and certainly will not benefit from self-interested approaches and offers of cash for case studies. We want to create a comprehensive and constructive response to our current challenges and send out a call to action for improved safety standards across the online gaming community. Petty attempts to generate more bad news are distracting us from the job at hand.
Please be assured that I will come back with fresh news just as soon as I am able.
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Swedish still to come.
One of the many rooms where Habbos have gathered in the last days.
An Update from the CEO
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Finnish and Swedish still to come.
I wanted to take this chance to provide an update on the current status of the site and what we are doing as a company to address and rectify the challenges uncovered by the Channel Four investigation.
First – on behalf of myself and all my staff in Sulake – I would like to thank the many thousands of users who have remained loyal to the site over the last few days. The many rooms filled with silent Habbos holding candles has been a source of inspiration at a challenging time and has reaffirmed our commitment to delivering a safe and positive user experience into the future.
Currently, I am unable to confirm a timescale for reopening the conversation function on the site. What I can say is that my employees and the senior management are working closely to ensure that best-in-class moderation and detection systems are in place to create a safer and improved experience for our many responsible users.
As a responsible business, the senior leadership of Sulake has agreed that our review of safety measures cannot be hurried. We are aware that the decision to mute has already resulted in reduced user numbers, but we have agreed that our focus must remain on the quality of interaction within the Habbo community, and not the quantity of visits we receive.
Whilst we continue to work on specific improvements, we have decided not to speak directly to the media, but would like to emphasise that the issues raised around the Habbo site are a challenge for every social media community. We hope that the recent focus on Habbo’s safety challenges will deliver a call to action to the many wholly unregulated social media sites that currently pose equal and greater challenges to the safety of legitimate user communities.
All of our loyal and silent Habbos will receive a badge to recognise their commitment through this period. I will be sure to update you on further developments just as soon as I am able. In the meantime, my thanks again for your ongoing support.
A Message To The Habbo Community From The CEO
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Italian still to come.
I am greatly saddened that following reports of abusive behaviors amongst a very small part of the Habbo community we have taken the decision to mute all conversations across the site.
We are still reviewing our long-term plans for the Habbo community, and would like to thank our millions of loyal users for their support at this challenging time. This decision has not been taken lightly and underlines the company’s continuing commitment to ensure that all our site users remain safeguarded from inappropriate behavior and conversations.
Our internal investigation is currently on-going, but we will be sure to inform all users of further developments in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime, my thanks for your patience and understanding.
Policing And Protecting The Habbo Community – A Message From The CEO
Speaking as a CEO, it’s an incredibly rewarding job to have responsibility for an online community like Habbo. Our site provides a forum for millions of young people from across the world to share views, interests and ideas through the characters they create. The freedom to explore the site and freely interact with other users is one of the reasons why we are one of the most popular online destinations for teenagers; there have been more than 268 million Habbo users in total and up to a further three million users join each month.
To keep users safe, we filter content and block inappropriate users. We also employ more than 225 moderators, tracking some 70 million lines of conversation globally every day on a 24/7 basis.
We work with child safety organisations and local police forces to address inappropriate behaviour. Habbo’s leading safety systems were recognised as making the service one of the safest social networks in a 2011 European Commission report. Last year we were also awarded the commendation of ‘Safer by Design’ from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).
Alongside the time and resource we invest to ensure that Habbo is one of the safest online communities, we also encourage our users to take responsibility for reporting any abuses on the site. This is why we provide education and rapid-response support to users who may experience uncomfortable conversations.
Through a combination of active moderation and user empowerment, we remain confident that we can continue to deliver the opportunity for our users to engage and communicate in a free but responsible manner.
We have included below some further detail on how we work behind the scenes to ensure our site users have a positive experience in a safe environment. For more information or to contact me directly, you can find me on Twitter @PaulLaFo.
Cybering Is Not The Habbo Way
After
launching the revamped version of the Habbo Way, we received quite a
few questions and comments from you regarding cybering and web cams. It
seems that we were not being clear enough and we want to make absolutely
sure that you know that our position is as follows:
We do not promote or allow explicitly sexual content. Cybering and cam requests are strictly forbidden in Habbo.
- Any person caught engaging in cybering (meaning: talk simulating sex) in Habbo will be muted immediately as a warning. Repeat offenders will be banned.
- Any person caught trying to solicit someone to leave Habbo for camming on other sites will be banned.
- Any room that is set up to clearly signal cybering activities will immediately be shut down.
We encourage flirting and getting to know others in Habbo. Habbo is a place of free and responsible self expression. We will not, however, tolerate any chat that simulates sexual behavior. To avoid any further misunderstanding regarding this point, we have also changed the wording in the Habbo Way.
You can talk to Paul on Twitter ››
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A Farewell To Pixels
The
time is nearing when Pixels will be no more… it might seem harsh and
sudden, but we can assure you that we’ve thought long and hard about
this, and we would not have decided to remove them unless we had
something else up our sleeve that we think would work better!
In order to answer some questions that will undoubtedly surface in the aftermath of these news, I asked Heini for some answers. Here’s what she had to say!
Habbo Helpers Q&A
Today
marked a big day, as the entire Habbo Helpers program took its first
trying steps outside the walls of the test Hotels! In order to make 100%
sure that everything worked when put together the way it’s supposed to
be (keep in mind that the test Hotels had been subjected to only bits
and pieces), the team decided to do a “pre-release” one day early in
Habbo.com.
Good news is… this launch has so far been going really great, which means that the rest of the Hotels will likely follow this Thursday!
In other words: Habbo Helpers is nearly 100% done, and unless you’re in .COM, your wait is almost over: tomorrow is the day – yay!
Until then, I thought we’d look at the answers to some of your questions about Habbo Helpers. I chose the ones that hadn’t already been answered in some way or another, and sent them to the Project Manager (who is a very happy man today!) – here’s what he had to say!
The Habbo Way
With
the launch of Habbo Helpers comes a revamp of the Habbo Way. Though
this update might look like it’s mostly visual, there is another
important difference worth noting as well!
From the very start, the Habbo Way was always a two-way street, a division between the things you should enjoy doing in Habbo (chatting, playing, building rooms etc), and the things you should not be doing (scamming, scripting, cheating etc).
Then throughout the years, it slowly morphed into a list of very specific “DON’Ts”, the things you shouldn’t be doing unless you wanted to be banned from Habbo. Yikes, pretty negative!
It was time for a change.
Monster Plant Fix Is On Its Way!
Since
last week, our tech team has been investigating the disappearances of
Monster Plants. Seems that a lot of Habbos’ Monster Plants have gone
missing, temporarily or permanently, because of a bug with the plants in
relation to Group Rooms, and this is obviously NOT okay.
They are working on a fix as we speak, but because it is a little bit complicated, we don’t know yet exactly when it will be implemented. However, they think they’ll be able to have it all sorted out by the end of this week, but hopefully even sooner than that.
Once fixed, your Monster Plant(s) will be returned to your Inventory, and automatically revived.
In other words, the minute they install the fix for this problem, you can check your Pet Inventory, and your plant will be there, alive and well, ready to be tended to as usual.
We are so sorry about this, and we hope to be able to fix it VERY soon.
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