i played howrse quite a lot (Finnish server) a few years back, when did all this happen? did any of this even happen?

If I’m remembering correctly, it was originally developed by Owlient and then purchased by Ubisoft some years ago. As far as the international server goes, they had some odd stuff going on with the moderation originally, mostly to do with allowing questionable roleplays and the mental illness glorification, but they were occasionally homophobic - I don’t remember a lot of religious propaganda c.2009-2011, but it definitely became more popular later on. I know I was banned back in 2012 for “queer propaganda” (pronouns in presentation with a little pride banner), which was interesting. When Ubisoft bought it, the moderation changed but didn’t make things great. From what I can tell, the homophobia is toned down, but still present, and the religious propaganda is still rampant. I’ve been back to playing on/off since 2015 and I think one of the better changes that Ubisoft made was reducing the amount of forums. There’s less player interaction, sure, but it also feels much less “dangerous” and it seems like there’s a lot less cliquey behavior, which definitely played into people being reported/not being reported for various things (innocent or not).

/r/Howrse Thread Link - i.redd.it