Fandom: Difference between revisions
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''' | '''{{Wplink|Fandom (website)|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 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260223042948/https://detailed.com/google-control/ |archive-date=23 Feb 2026}}</ref> | In 2018, Fandom was acquired by [[wikipedia:Private_equity_firm|private equity firm]] TPG Capital. In 2024, the Detailed.com blog, which analyzes web development with regard to [[wikipedia:Search_engine_optimization|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 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260223042948/https://detailed.com/google-control/ |archive-date=23 Feb 2026}}</ref> | ||
==Consumer impact summary== | |||
===User freedom=== | ===User freedom=== | ||
The following message was posted by one of the [https:// | The following message was posted by one of the [https://megalodon.jp/2026-0402-1017-25/https://x.com:443/Blondiee89/status/1931817740580589681 SOAP moderators] and was sent after a complaint from Fandom's automated system:<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> | ||
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>{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Response from SOAP members in regards to the Fandom Wiki vandalism |url=https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/TheOdysseyHadAPurpose/comments/1e1jahx/response_from_soap_members_in_regards_to_the/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260321135345/https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/TheOdysseyHadAPurpose/comments/1e1jahx/response_from_soap_members_in_regards_to_the/ |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |website=Reddit |quote=Admins can't give permission to destroy a wiki, and if they do, they will be demoted and blocked. Futher, The content on this platform belongs to fandom and not the admins}}</ref> and they can modify or alter it without the prior consent of the writers involved. | [[File:Fandom 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 Hiding this as Archive.today has since been blacklisted. Do not delete it; there are no other archive captures. -Sojourna -->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>{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Response from SOAP members in regards to the Fandom Wiki vandalism |url=https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/TheOdysseyHadAPurpose/comments/1e1jahx/response_from_soap_members_in_regards_to_the/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260321135345/https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/TheOdysseyHadAPurpose/comments/1e1jahx/response_from_soap_members_in_regards_to_the/ |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |website=[[Reddit]] |quote=Admins can't give permission to destroy a wiki, and if they do, they will be demoted and blocked. Futher, The content on this platform belongs to fandom and not the admins}}</ref> and they can modify or alter it without the prior consent of the writers involved. | |||
Fandom had previously replaced entire pages with advertisements without consulting the users involved. Among them are paid advertisements from corporations such as McDonald's to remove part of the historical data of their products for promotions. | Fandom had previously replaced entire pages with advertisements without consulting the users involved. Among them are paid advertisements from corporations such as McDonald's to remove part of the historical data of their products for promotions. | ||
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===Censorship=== | ===Censorship=== | ||
[[File:Fandom | [[File:Fandom wiki censorship and ads on South Park Public Library.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. ]] | ||
Since Fandom is a company that relies on advertising to operate, part of the staff has to sanitize content to appeal to most of its brands and partners. This has caused certain clashes with editorial teams that discuss mature topics. | Since Fandom is a company that relies on advertising to operate, part of the staff has to sanitize content to appeal to most of its brands and partners. This has caused certain clashes with editorial teams that discuss mature topics. | ||
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===Anti-competitive practices=== | ===Anti-competitive practices=== | ||
<blockquote>''"People on the fandom wiki are taking a bunch of new pages from https://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."'' - [https:// | <blockquote>''"People on the fandom wiki are taking a bunch of new pages from https://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."'' - [https://megalodon.jp/2026-0402-1027-34/https://x.com:443/Vishkujo/status/1364327126116282369 @Vishkujo], administrator of the JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia (2021) </blockquote>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. |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20260124011402/https://deathbattle.miraheze.org/wiki/DEATH_BATTLE!_Wiki:Leaving_FANDOM |archive-date=24 Jan 2026}}</ref> | ||
===Business Model=== | ===Business Model=== | ||
<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" -'' 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] </blockquote>[[File:Fandom | <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" -'' 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]</blockquote> | ||
[[File:Fandom ad information for Path of Exile.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. The model used by Fandom was previously criticized by videographer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqeNnutJUhE Blue Reevie] in 2019, who questioned the ethics of how the company was using unpaid volunteer labor to organize part of its structure. Later in 2024, former volunteer “Frisk” noted that he was concerned about how the company might be violating [https://frisk.space/posts/fandom-and-the-multimillion-business-of-monetizing-volunteer-work/FLSAemail.txt Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor] (FLSA) that dictate how much volunteers can contribute to a for-profit organization, questioning whether it is right for the company to use unpaid persons to moderate and update the content of its website. | 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. The model used by Fandom was previously criticized by videographer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqeNnutJUhE Blue Reevie] in 2019, who questioned the ethics of how the company was using unpaid volunteer labor to organize part of its structure. Later in 2024, former volunteer “Frisk” noted that he was concerned about how the company might be violating [https://frisk.space/posts/fandom-and-the-multimillion-business-of-monetizing-volunteer-work/FLSAemail.txt Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor] (FLSA) that dictate how much volunteers can contribute to a for-profit organization, questioning whether it is right for the company to use unpaid persons to moderate and update the content of its website. | ||
In early 2024, editor [https:// | In early 2024, editor [https://old.reddit.com/r/titanfall/comments/1b1qlxl/about_the_migration/ The_Sniperstock] announced that Fandom had removed his admin rights before the fork was fully completed and informed users that Fandom is capable of revoking admin rights from anyone it considers to be moving. | ||
In 2026, the official GTA wiki moved to Weird Gloop; editors of one of the largest video game wikis stated that Fandom was significantly disrupting its internal operations. Editor WildBrick142 stated that Fandom had previously stripped Admin452 of his administrative rights—who had spent a decade building the Saint’s Row wiki—when the company unilaterally decided to create its own wiki for the franchise’s reboot. He also mentioned how Fandom forces the inclusion of intrusive elements to turn the page into a “billboard” rather than a proper informational site.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2026 |title=GTA Wiki: Moving from Fandom |url=https://gta.wiki/w/GTA_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260321134010/https://gta.wiki/w/GTA_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |website=GTA Wiki via Weird Gloop}}</ref> | In 2026, the official GTA wiki moved to Weird Gloop; editors of one of the largest video game wikis stated that Fandom was significantly disrupting its internal operations. Editor WildBrick142 stated that Fandom had previously stripped Admin452 of his administrative rights—who had spent a decade building the Saint’s Row wiki—when the company unilaterally decided to create its own wiki for the franchise’s reboot. He also mentioned how Fandom forces the inclusion of intrusive elements to turn the page into a “billboard” rather than a proper informational site.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2026 |title=GTA Wiki: Moving from Fandom |url=https://gta.wiki/w/GTA_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260321134010/https://gta.wiki/w/GTA_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom |archive-date=21 Mar 2026 |website=GTA Wiki via Weird Gloop}}</ref> | ||
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===Fandom Shop (September 2020)=== | ===Fandom Shop (September 2020)=== | ||
[[File:Fandom | [[File:Fandom bootleg 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 | | 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 |author=Danganronpa Wiki |title=Dangaronpa Wiki on X |url=https://x.com/danganronpawiki/status/1306182977999732741 |website=[[X]] |date=16 Sep 2020 |access-date=1 Apr 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://megalodon.jp/2026-0402-0539-03/https://x.com:443/danganronpawiki/status/1306182977999732741 |archive-date=1 Apr 2026 |quote=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.}}</ref> | ||
===NFT Integration Plans (February 2022)=== | ===NFT Integration Plans (February 2022)=== | ||
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===Online grooming and sexual harassment (November 2023)=== | ===Online grooming and sexual harassment (November 2023)=== | ||
<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." -'' @bruhwrecksnoobs in the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqWuIcugrY FANDOM Is Disgusting]</blockquote>[[File:Fandom | <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." -'' @bruhwrecksnoobs in the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqWuIcugrY FANDOM Is Disgusting]</blockquote> | ||
[[File:Fandom - Slimebeast tweets.png|thumb|Following the release of his videos explaining Fandom's failure to moderate content in order to protect minors, Howard posted a series of tweets reporting that several Fandom wiki administrators had engaged in inappropriate behavior and that the company had failed to properly address the fact that a minor who had previously contributed to Fandom was being harassed.]] | |||
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. |archive-url=https://preservetube.com/watch?v=7bKb6-xr4Qg |archive-date=23 Feb 2026}}</ref> | 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. |archive-url=https://preservetube.com/watch?v=7bKb6-xr4Qg |archive-date=23 Feb 2026}}</ref> | ||