Fandom: Difference between revisions

'''Fandom''', formerly known as '''Wikia''',  is a media conglomerate based in the United States. The website has more than 50 million user-generated pages, as well as other multimedia databases such as GameFAQs, Metacritic, and Gamepedia. It also owns entertainment outlets such as GameSpot and TV Guide, in addition to owning online video game retailers such as Fanatical.

In 2018, Fandom was acquired by private equity firm TPG Capital. In 2024, the Detailed.com blog, which analyzes web development with regard to SEO, categorized Fandom as one of the 16 companies that dominate global traffic for Google Search, noting that it had been one of the largest domains it had ever recorded with an estimated 800 million visits according to statistics provided by Semrush in the same year.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Allsopp |first=Glen |date=2024 |title=How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results (2024 Edition) |url=https://detailed.com/google-control/ |access-date=2025-08-21 |website=Detailed.com}}</ref>

 

<blockquote>''"Admin or not, the staff doesn't care about it, neither do the filters. If Fandom staff wants the word censored: you don't have any rights to be against it. Not even us"''</blockquote>- Message posted by one of the [https://archive.ph/IWuY5 SOAP moderators], which was sent following a complaint from Fandom's automated system.[[File:Fandom Wiki - Zionist Ads.png|alt=Fandom Wikia Zionist Ad|thumb|Users do not have the right to restrict or decide which advertisements appear on the pages. Fandom would sometimes insert advertisements from [https://archive.ph/KB8yo political organizations] without prior consultation with the editors involved.]]

Users on Fandom have little control over the content they upload to the platform. Furthermore, Fandom staff clarify that all content uploaded by users to the platform is their property,<ref name=":0" /> and they can modify or alter it without the prior consent of the writers involved.

At the end of 2024, Jonathan Lee, part of the ''Weird Gloop'' platform staff, published an article about why they were helping several groups of editors migrate from Fandom.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Jonathan |date=2024-10-10 |title=Why we're helping more wikis move away from Fandom |url=https://weirdgloop.org/blog/why-were-helping-more-wikis-move-away-from-fandom#why-ditching-fandom-is-cool-and-based |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Weird Gloop Blog |quote=If a wiki community is unhappy, and they have a better option somewhere else, they should be able to leave and take their stuff with them. We won't prop up the old wiki, Weekend-at-Bernies style, abusing the dominant Google position that the wiki editors built up while they were on our platform.}}</ref> Lee explained the advantages of migrating to independent host servers, noting that after the migrations, the number of edits increased significantly compared to their counterparts on Fandom in the case of the RuneScape and Minecraft wikis. He explained that one of the main problems with the platform was that users had no control over the content they published. Each wiki hosted by Weird Gloop has several clauses and memorandums in agreement with the editorial team, where there are protocols in place in case the community leaves.

When you create an account on Fandom, your information and data is shared with more than 300 advertising and media partners.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-08-20 |title=Fandom and the multimillion dollar business of monetizing volunteer work |url=https://frisk.space/posts/fandom-and-the-multimillion-business-of-monetizing-volunteer-work/ |access-date=2025-08-20 |website=Frisk.space}}</ref> Additionally, the data provided by users is used for training AI models, including posts in discussions as well as content provided to pages. In 2025, Fandom confirmed to ''Inc Magazine'' that it had trained an AI model called ''“FanDNA Helix”'' using more than 50 million pages and user-generated posts so that advertising companies could target ads based on user consumption habits.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sherry |first=Ben |date=2025-02-18 |title=How Fandom Uses AI to Turn Your Obsessions Into Gold |url=https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/how-fandom-uses-ai-to-turn-your-obsessions-into-gold/91145315 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250312182852/https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/how-fandom-uses-ai-to-turn-your-obsessions-into-gold/91145315 |archive-date=March 12, 2025 |access-date=2025-07-20 |work=Inc Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref>

<blockquote>''"The way Fandom displayed that they would permanently lock (and eventually delete) LyricWiki based on “We want Fandom to be a family friendly site…We also have some advertisers, for example Google, who have rules on what their ads can be shown next to” motivated us to censor content more aggressively.''</blockquote><blockquote>''Because we received no actual guidance from Fandom on what counts as e.g. “pornographic” or “obscene” besides a literal “I know it when I see it,” this led to a lot of inconsistency, a lot of back-and-forth, and a lot of headache for editors and readers alike."'' </blockquote>- Quote from the page [https://vocaloidlyrics.miraheze.org/wiki/Vocaloid_Lyrics_Wiki:Fandom_Migration Fandom Migration] via Vocaloid Lyrics[[File:Fandom Wiki - South Park Public Library Censorhip and Ads.png|alt=South Park Archives Fandom Wiki Censored Streaming Services (2025)|thumb|400x400px|Screenshot of the episode "Crippled Summer" along with intrusive ads for streaming services that were implemented without prior consent from users. Additionally, all profits from these affiliate links go to Fandom instead of the editors who wrote the original articles. ]]

In 2017, Fandom attempted to censor a large portion of the sprites from the mainline ''Shin Megami Tensei'' games developed by Japanese studio Atlus after the company decided that most of the images did not qualify as artistic nudity.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-10-07 |title=Image censorship on Megami Tensei wiki by wikia employee |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/7bbii9/image_censorship_on_megami_tensei_wiki_by_wikia/ |access-date=2025-08-22 |website=r/Megaten via Reddit}}</ref> Starting in 2021, Fandom would attempt to maintain a much stricter policy for the platform as family friendly, as well as censoring any content. This caused several wikis to move to other services due to frequent censorship, including the ''South Park Archives'',<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Blog:Farewell to Fandom |url=https://southpark.wiki.gg/wiki/Blog:Farewell_to_Fandom |access-date=2025-08-22 |website=South Park Archives via Wiki.gg}}</ref> where much of the scripts, characters, and scenes had to be censored to maintain a more family-friendly approach for advertisers, causing navigation errors as well as errors in the templates.

Later in 2025, the Siivagunner and Vocaloid Lyrics wikis migrated to different hosts, citing similar concerns where Fandom had removed a lot of content that could be controversial. The editorial team of the ''Siivagunner Wiki'' released a statement saying that part of the reason for moving the wiki to an independent host was due to the deliberate deletion of ''Mysikt Wiki'', another group dedicated to remixes and mashups, without prior notification from Fandom.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025 |title=Forking announcement |url=https://www.siivagunner.wiki/wiki/SiIvaGunner_Wiki:Forking_announcement |access-date=2025-08-22 |website=Siivagunner Wiki}}</ref>

<blockquote>''"People on the fandom wiki are taking a bunch of new pages from http://jojowiki.com that I and other editors spent lots of time creating just to have it on their site. They aren't explicitly plagiarizing (they tried to before) but the content and layouts are really similar. This time it's FANDOM's own employees getting paid to take our pages and replace words with synonyms. I wouldn't mind if they at least credited us (which they are supposed to do as per our copyright policy), but they have a filter that bans anyone who links to our site."'' </blockquote>- Quote from [https://archive.ph/rDtMx @Vishkujo], administrator of the JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia (2021)

In a blog post published in 2025 by editor Violet, who had previously worked on moving Death Battle Wiki to the non-profit host ''Miraheze'', he explained that one of the reasons for moving the wiki to a different host was due to Fandom's attempts to remove links or mentions to wikis on different platforms, explaining that this has led to a lot of internal discussion regarding external links, where editors are forced to promote dead wikis that are still hosted on Fandom instead of independent options that are actively maintained.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025 |title=Leaving Fandom |url=https://deathbattle.miraheze.org/wiki/DEATH_BATTLE!_Wiki:Leaving_FANDOM |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Death Battle Wiki! via Miraheze |quote=Aside from this dodgy language being used to try and justify their anti-competitive practices, this also actively hinders our own editing by preventing us from providing external links to wikis that have migrated out of Fandom and are being actively supported, which means we are not "organically sharing" accurate information for franchises acknowledged by the show like, say, Terraria, Bendy, and Guilty Gear.}}</ref>

<blockquote>''"I briefly worked for Fandom last year, and I worked closely with GameSpot and TV Guide. After ten years in the editorial industry I had never seen editorial brands treated so poorly. Fandom is fundamentally a company that ONLY knows how to operate using an army of unpaid volunteer editors and have no clue whatsoever how to manage paid writers and editors. It was an absolute nightmare of mismanagement, and while I was going to bat hard for the editors (like what do I care about Fandom after a few weeks of working there, I literally only care about journalists being resourced well enough to keep their jobs and do great work) my management started drilling down on me pretty quickly. I wound up going on disability because the working conditions there exacerbated a mental health crisis (having to do with the nightmare layoffs at Condé that I'd just gone through), and eventually I left"'' </blockquote>Quote from a former FANDOM Employee in the article [https://gemvidio-navi.neocities.org/Tech/fandom-working-environment Behind the moderation of Fandom Wikis: Controversies, incidents, and toxicity]

[[File:Fandom Wiki - Path of Exile Ad Information.png|alt=Fandom Wiki Ads Monetization Information|thumb|Using external tools, you can see which ads are being displayed and how much Fandom is paid to display them on the wiki. The people who write the articles do not receive any monetization for these ads, just as Fandom does not tell the people who work on its wikis how much they actually earn from monetizing their content. (Source: [https://forkfandom.com/ ForkFandom] by Jacques Corby-Tuech)]]

In mid-2008, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article about the ''[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/31/wikipedia Transformer Wiki]'' migration, which was the first formal piece of criticism that the company described as “The typical digital sharecropping website is a capitalist's fantasy,” explaining that users who contribute to Fandom wikis do not receive rights, protections, or remuneration for the work they contribute to the website, while Fandom claims 100% of the ad revenue generated by user-generated content.

<blockquote>''"Honestly, what allowed me to never put 100% of my trust to the FANDOM Staff was the fact that they disregard the concerns of their userbase most of the time. They'd introduce certain features and implement them without considering all of the potential flaws that'd persist. Remember the Portable infoboxes? They didn't think of inserting official tabbers in them when they first introduced them. It took several months before tabbers in PIs finally became a thing."'' </blockquote>- Quote from [https://archive.ph/UUvUT @QueenPinksweets], former Vocaloid Wiki Moderator (2021)

 

In mid-2017, Spanish programmer Jesús Martínez Novo, who had been working on the WikiDex project since 2006, published a note discussing his experience with the platform as well as the forking of the largest Pokémon wiki in Spanish. Martínez explained that in 2017, Fandom had forced users to abruptly change the code of some of their templates. This decision was not previously consulted with the users who had previously coded much of the site voluntarily, and the company gave them one week to convert the rest of the templates.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Martínez |first=Jesús |date=2017-05-07 |title=Wikia — When the site you spend most of the time goes evil |url=https://medium.com/@martineznovo/wikia-when-the-site-you-spend-most-of-the-time-goes-evil-1ce9d3f79285 |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Medium}}</ref>

Throughout 2017, Fandom introduced auto-playing to several popular video game wikis, such as RuneScape and Fallout. These videos were inserted without prior consultation with editors, and many of them contained misinformation about the games covered by the wikis. The editorial team had to post notices informing users that they had no control over the videos, which were created solely by Fandom.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-09-05 |title=(PSA) Featured Videos on the RuneScape Wiki |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/6yc8xt/psa_featured_videos_on_the_runescape_wiki/ |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=r/runescape via Reddit}}</ref> Some of the videos contained mispronunciations of in-game items, as well as featured stolen material from game footage. Notably, the videos produced about "Zamik Wizard"<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=2017-08-05 |title=(PSA) Featured Videos on the Old School RuneScape Wiki |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/6ybxly/psa_featured_videos_on_the_old_school_runescape/ |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=r/2007scape via Reddit |quote=As you can probably guess, me and my colleagues are pissed about this change. And the worst thing is that we have ZERO SAY about this; it is out of our control. We have even created a template that we have added right underneath these videos to emphasize that these videos were made by the company, and not us, the admins who provide you with actual quality articles.}}</ref> are commonly referred to as a joke by the community due to the poor quality of the video.

[[File:Fandom Wiki - Bootleg Ripoff Online Shop Ad.jpg|alt=Fandom Wiki Shop Ripoff Bootleg Store (2020)|thumb|During 2020, Fandom aggressively promoted a store on its wikis, with much of the merchandise consisting of poor-quality bootlegs/ripoffs. Additionally, users expressed concern about how Fandom was clearly selling and profiting from merchandise based on intellectual property that it did not own.]]

At the end of 2020, the company introduced links to "Fandom Shop" on various wikis, an initiative by the company to distribute merchandise. This measure was criticized by users, as the links were embedded in the site's navigation without prior consultation by administrators. In addition, some of the products included poor-quality bootlegs products.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-09-16 |title=Wikia/FANDOM are rolling out a "Shop" tab on Wikis, filled with affiliate (for profit) links to stores. I would like to make folks aware that nearly 99% of items in this tab are UNOFFICIAL/BOOTLEGS. |url=https://x.com/danganronpawiki/status/1306182977999732741 |access-date=2025-07-17 |website=Danganronpa Wiki via Twitter}}</ref>

In early 2022, Fandom CEO Perkins Miller announced the possibility of integrating NFTs into the platform, despite backlash from user surveys and concerns about the environmental damage it could cause.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-02-16 |title=Perkins Miller, the CEO of @getFANDOM, our Wiki host, has put out a statement on LinkedIN that the platform is considering getting into NFTs, despite the admitted extremely poor feedback from a community survey. |url=https://x.com/danganronpawiki/status/1494105070220292098 |access-date=2025-08-23 |website=Danganronpa Wiki via Twitter}}</ref>

In June 2023 the [[McDonalds|McDonald's]] corporation paid Fandom to completely change the McDonald's Fandom wiki into an advertisement for their recent relaunch of the Grimace Shake as well as other McDonald's products. These changes were made against the wishes of the McDonald's Wiki editors including the original author of the Grimace page. The changelogs left by Fandom stated “switching over the entirety of Grimace article at McDonald’s request, just for the length of this campaign in 2023,”.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Grimace Fandom Page |url=https://mcdonalds.fandom.com/wiki/Grimace?oldid=29634 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230617204844/https://mcdonalds.fandom.com/wiki/Grimace?oldid=29634 |archive-date=2023-06-17}}</ref>  

<blockquote>''"When you're just trying to speak out and get a pedophile off the site, or they say that everything happened on Discord we can't do anything, [...], saying that pedophilia is okay if it's offsite this is just disgusting"''</blockquote>- Quote from @bruhwrecksnoobs on the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqWuIcugrY FANDOM Is Disgusting]

In 2023, writer and video game developer Christopher Howard Wolf, under the alias "Slimebeast", posted several videos discussing how Fandom had allowed minors to be exposed to inappropriate content and citing concerns that child moderators had to maintain contact with groomers. Additionally, Howard Wolf criticized the fact that Fandom was using under-age volunteers to moderate its platform instead of proper employees to moderate the situation.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2023-11-19 |title=Wikitubia has a Minor Issue - Plus CreepsMcPasta Caught in 4k |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bKb6-xr4Qg |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=Slimebeast via YouTube |quote=That mod he referred to WAS THE UNDERAGED MOD THAT DID WHAT HE REQUESTED, proving that Wikitubia having on minors as mods puts them in direct contact with groomers. Imagine EDP DMing a kid mod who has a "duty" to talk to him.}}</ref>

Howard later posted videos explaining the inappropriate behavior of one of the administrators of Wikitubia and The Amazing Digital Circus Wiki, explaining that minors were being exposed, as well as publishing several documents detailing how minors were being harassed.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Howard |first=Cristopher |date=2024-10-26 |title=Pred Concerns on YouTube Wiki & The Amazing Digital Circus Wiki |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXM_LRnWvTE |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=SlimeBeast via YouTube}}</ref> He also reported on Fandom Staff's handling of the situation, which had previously banned a victim of grooming for expressing concern about the safety of minors on the platform.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wolf |first=Cristopher |date=2024-10-28 |title=Fandom (The Company) Bans Grooming Whistleblower For Whistleblowing |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSGGVQwG1Is |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=SlimeBeast via YouTube}}</ref>

In July 2025, Fandom began experimenting with creating wikis in other languages using generative AI. The move was boycotted by users, citing concerns about replacing editors and translators who had previously worked on the website to provide high-quality translations manually, as well as the dismantling of international support for other languages.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-07-08 |title=Fandom is planning to start translating English wiki articles into other languages using AI. If you log in to view comments on the blogpost announcing this, you can see this decision is extremely unpopular with Fandom editors. |url=https://x.com/mossbag69/status/1942656734146777248 |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=Mossbag69 via Twitter}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-07-07 |title=Apparently @getFANDOM is planning to launch AI generated non English wikis, and I *cannot* stress enough how bad this idea is, and how disrespectful it is to the people who create the content on their platform. |url=https://x.com/SEJordanWilson/status/1942405776267419777 |access-date=2025-07-17 |website=Jordan Wilson via Twitter}}</ref> In response, a petition was launched to halt the process of automating translations with generative AI, with approximately 390 different editors signing up to have the project canceled.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-07-11 |title=We are now over 390 editor signatures against Fandom's new plan to use AI to translate wikis from English to other languages. This replaces human editors with AI, and if Fandom is serious about supporting foreign languages, invest in people. Not machines. |url=https://x.com/SEJordanWilson/status/1943777100982628579 |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=Jordan Wilson via Twitter}}</ref>  

In early August 2025, Stowarzyszenie Minecraft Wiki Polska, which hosts the independent wiki for the video game "Minecraft" in Polish, filed a DMCA claim for copyright infringement following the transfer of data from Gamepedia to Fandom.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-08-06 |title=David and Goliath - on Polish Minecraft Wiki taking legal action against Fandom |url=https://frisk.space/posts/pl-mcw-fandom/ |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=Frisk.space Blog |quote=Fandom has "aggregated content from the wiki" and by doing so has started to violate the license agreements. We read that "as a result of wiki account transfers, at least 1440 different usernames being pseudonyms of their creators were damaged". By result of doing so, Fandom couldn't fulfill the authorship requirement of Creative Commons licensed used by the wiki (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).}}</ref>

In 2024, Vishal Shah sued Fandom for privacy violations, claiming that the company was sharing IP address information with external platforms, including [[Meta]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Christopher |date=2024-10-24 |title=Users Advance Fandom ‘Pen Register’ Suit Over IP Address Sharing |url=https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/consumers-video-privacy-class-action-against-fandom-can-proceed |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=Bloomberg Law}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Landis |first=Blake |date=2024-10-25 |title=Ninth Circuit Ruling Shows How CIPA Applies to Internet Tracking |url=https://natlawreview.com/article/invisible-data-real-consequences-navigating-ip-consent-dilemma |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=The National Law Review |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Proposed class says Fandom illegally tracked IP addresses |url=https://www.dailyjournal.com/article/376511-proposed-class-says-fandom-illegally-tracked-ip-addresses |access-date=2025-08-17 |website=The Daily Journal}}</ref>