Jump to content

Fandom

From Consumer Rights Wiki
Fandom
Basic information
Founded 2006-12-12
Legal Structure Private
Industry Entertainment
Official website https://www.fandom.com/

Fandom, formerly known as Wikia, is a platform composed mainly of user-generated content on different types of multimedia, including video games, movies, series, and books. It also owns several entertainment outlets, such as GameSpot and TV Guide, as well as other multimedia databases, such as GameFAQs and MetaCritic.

In 2018, Fandom was acquired by private equity firm TPG Capital.

Consumer-impact summary

User freedom

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,[1] 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.[2]

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.[3] 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.

Lee explained that giving editors the right to leave and transfer their content to another platform entirely helps prevent the host from going through enshittification processes, as it forces the host to strive to provide a better service in the event that users are dissatisfied with the service they have, rather than maintaining dead projects as Fandom does when a large part of the community decides to migrate en masse after policy changes.

Privacy

When you create an account on Fandom, your information and data is shared with more than 300 advertising and media partners.[4] Additionally, the data provided by users is used for training AI models, including posts in discussions as well as content provided to pages. In addition, user-generated data is used to train AI models, including posts in discussions and content provided to wiki 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.[5]

Anti-competitive practices

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.[6]

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Fandom category.

Portable Infoboxes (May 2017)

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.[7]

This decision caused quite a few problems on the website, as the technology behind Portable Infoboxes was not well-developed at the time, with templates unable to display icons or multiple images. In addition, Fandom would remove administrative rights from anyone who attempted to convert the templates back to their original code.[7]

Auto-playing videos (September 2017)

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.[8] 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"[1] are commonly referred to as a joke by the community due to the poor quality of the video.

Fandom Shop (September 2020)

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.[9]

Online grooming and sexual harassment (November 2023)

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.[2]

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.[10] 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.[11]

AI translations (July 2025)

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.[12] [13] 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.[14]

Stowarzyszenie Minecraft Wiki Polska (August 2025)

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.[15]

Lawsuits

Vishal Shah v. Fandom, Inc. (September 2024)

In 2024, Vishal Shah sued Fandom for privacy violations, claiming that the company was sharing IP address information with external platforms, including Meta.[16][17][18]

Products

This is a list of the company's product lines with articles on this wiki.

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.


See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.


External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "(PSA) Featured Videos on the Old School RuneScape Wiki". r/2007scape via Reddit. 2017-08-05. Retrieved 2025-08-18. 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.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Wikitubia has a Minor Issue - Plus CreepsMcPasta Caught in 4k". Slimebeast via YouTube. 2023-11-19. Retrieved 2025-08-18. 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.
  3. ↑ Lee, Jonathan (2024-10-10). "Why we're helping more wikis move away from Fandom". Weird Gloop Blog. Retrieved 2025-08-19. 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.
  4. ↑ "Fandom and the multimillion dollar business of monetizing volunteer work". Frisk.space. 2025-08-20. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  5. ↑ Sherry, Ben (2025-02-18). "How Fandom Uses AI to Turn Your Obsessions Into Gold". Inc Magazine. Archived from the original on March 12, 2025. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
  6. ↑ "Leaving Fandom". Death Battle Wiki! via Miraheze. 2025. Retrieved 2025-08-19. 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.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Martínez, Jesús (2017-05-07). "Wikia — When the site you spend most of the time goes evil". Medium. Retrieved 2025-08-19.
  8. ↑ "(PSA) Featured Videos on the RuneScape Wiki". r/runescape via Reddit. 2017-09-05. Retrieved 2025-08-18.
  9. ↑ "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". Danganronpa Wiki via Twitter. 2020-09-16. Retrieved 2025-07-17.
  10. ↑ Howard, Cristopher (2024-10-26). "Pred Concerns on YouTube Wiki & The Amazing Digital Circus Wiki". SlimeBeast via YouTube. Retrieved 2025-08-18.
  11. ↑ Wolf, Cristopher (2024-10-28). "Fandom (The Company) Bans Grooming Whistleblower For Whistleblowing". SlimeBeast via YouTube. Retrieved 2025-08-18.
  12. ↑ "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". Mossbag69 via Twitter. 2025-07-08. Retrieved 2025-08-17.
  13. ↑ "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". Jordan Wilson via Twitter. 2025-07-07. Retrieved 2025-07-17.
  14. ↑ "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". Jordan Wilson via Twitter. 2025-07-11. Retrieved 2025-08-17.
  15. ↑ "David and Goliath - on Polish Minecraft Wiki taking legal action against Fandom". Frisk.space Blog. 2025-08-06. Retrieved 2025-08-17. 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).
  16. ↑ Brown, Christopher (2024-10-24). "Users Advance Fandom 'Pen Register' Suit Over IP Address Sharing". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved 2025-08-17.
  17. ↑ Landis, Blake (2024-10-25). "Ninth Circuit Ruling Shows How CIPA Applies to Internet Tracking". The National Law Review. Retrieved 2025-08-17.
  18. ↑ "Proposed class says Fandom illegally tracked IP addresses". The Daily Journal. Retrieved 2025-08-17.
Retrieved from "https://consumerrights.wiki/index.php?title=Fandom&oldid=21268"