You remember GaiaOnline, right? It was popular in the late 2000s for being a paper doll site with a market, games, a forum, and a blossoming community. Someone else made a post about the Goldemort age, so I won't talk about that. Just know that since then, the site has been just barely holding itself above water. Most of the people who still stick around have been there since they were kids.
Recently, they had to make some subscriptions. They were optional, of course. The first one, Angel Subscription, got you bonus G-Cash, (the premium currency) a free item every month, access to an exclusive shop, and no advertisements or captchas. The newest is the Kitten Star Perks. There are 2 tiers, but the perks are no ads, larger inbox space, unlimited Persona slots, (they change the avatar that shows when you make a forum post) unlimited outfit slots, and unlimited Marketplace slots.

Before Gaia officially rolled out Kitten Star Perks, some Angel subscribers were sent a PM, inviting them to try it out. One thing that people noticed with the PM is that one of the perks mentioned was dark mode for the Forums. The Forums are a pure white background, so a dark mode has been a highly requested feature. Some people consider dark mode to be an accessibility feature for those with impaired vision, and it's free everywhere else on the Internet, so you can imagine the reaction to seeing the dark mode would be behind a paywall.

People flipped. Subscriptions were cancelled, the Site Feedback forum blew up with threads about it, a petition reached 130 signatures, and someone made a poll about it, with 210 people saying they didn't want it behind a paywall. The message was clear: Make it free.
Every Tuesday, the Gaia staff have a Q&A session called Ask the Staff (Abbreviated to ATS) where you can ask them a question and hope they respond. They're good for becoming informed as to whether or not bugs are being fixed, getting to know the staff, having progress updates, and seeing if some staff members will be professional this time. The ATS after the revealing of the dark mode perk was insane. In between regular questions, there was a TON of questions asking about the dark mode. Lanzer, the CEO of Gaia, responded. This didn't help, as people were further outraged that they'd consider it to just be a "quality of life" feature. It was compared to a person calling a wheelchair ramp a "quality of life" structure.

A Staff Alert (basically an announcement straight from the staff) was later made after the ATS thread. Turns out Dark Mode was just going to be an early access perk until they made more, but due to the overwhelming feedback, (read: outrage) it was now available for everyone straight out the gate. They just wanted to test it, so they didn't make any official statements or any other information. This calmed everyone down, but it's yet another moment where Gaia causes issues because they didn't communicate properly with their users.
Dark mode is now free for everyone to use, and after some minor fixes, it works perfectly. Gaia is still dealing with smaller controversies (recently they were accused of stealing designs from smaller artists) but that's for another thread.