This is the second time ownership fell into the hands of cult-likes. However the Scientologists weren't this mask-off with incorporated grooming shit into the main game of their child-friendly website at the time.
The whole "Neopets was owned by scientology" thing has always been blown way out of proportion, but I agree. Still, I must sperg.
Doug Dohring was the majority shareholder of Neopets from 2000-2005. He used Scientology assets to help the management side of the company. Adam Powell (may he live forever in poverty) and Donna Williams still ran the show. The Neopets staff at the time had near zero interaction with any scientology people. Powell and Williams didn't even know that Dohring was connected with the Church of Scientology for the first few months he was involved with Neopets.
I am old enough that I've played through every era, minus the OG 1999 britslop version. 2000-2005 was the golden era. The magazine was in publication, the TCG was being printed by WOTC, plotlines were constant, and most importantly the site ran like butter. The one and only questionable thing that made it to the website is something I can't even prove existed.
Just below the daily trivia question there was an off-site link to a survey site. You could answer a few questions for neopoints. It wasn't there for long, I don't think. It's burned in my mind because every once in a while there were questions like "Are you religious?" "Are you spiritual?" "Do you go to church because your family makes you?". Even as a kid I knew that was wild to have on a children's site that banned users for discussing that very topic (which I had seen in action at the time over multiple users discussing the Amish).
But again, it wasn't there long, it was technically offsite, and I can't even prove it really happened. Otherwise, Neopets.com adhered entirely to the original creators' vision.
Dohring wanted to transform Neopets into an educational website of some sort, but chose not to and backed out. (Tangentially, Dohring founded ABCmouse.com later on, if you have ever seen those commercials. I've had other parents describe the website as a replacement for preschool. I've never looked into it.)
Neopets was bought entirely by Viacom after that, but even though they made major changes to the Neopets site they didn't go against the rules of the brand. Much later it passed hands to Jumpstart, who ran the site into the ground and hot potatoed it to their parent company. Despite their incompetence, they didn't make changes to the Neopets lore or base set of rules. Neopets is now basically owned by a single Chinese(?) guy and is an independent entity. This is the first time basic ideas like "no politics, no romance, no adult topics, etc." have been changed.
The current Neopets team knows for a fact that the huge majority of people who play are 30+ in age. They are actively choosing to cripple the Neopets brand by marketing to the 30+ adult-babies instead of the 30+ adults with children who could pass the game on to a new generation. Not only that, but how the hell are they going to market themselves to potential partners? They can't say it's a kids site anymore. They bank solely on nostalgia. How do you convince anyone to invest in nostalgia?
They have admittedly done great things for the functionality of the site, but introducing fanfic tier shipping and including real life politics is going against the brand. They are the only owners to have gone against the original creators' vision. If this was happening when I was a kid I'd be weirded out just as I was with the religious surveys.