Kept alive, bricked, revived: community articulation work and value renegotiation beyond a Robot's commercial failure

Abstract

This paper examines the community-driven sustenance of Moxie, a social robot that faced discontinuation when its parent company failed to secure funding. Through interviews and investigative digital ethnography, we study how users performed extensive articulation work to transition from corporate support to an open-source platform. Our findings reveal that invisible labor and value negotiation were central to Moxie's continued operation, simultaneously opening access for some users while excluding others. These processes also fundamentally reshaped the robot's desirability and meaning within the user community. This work demonstrates how socio-technical infrastructures, articulation work, and value renegotiation can sustain robots beyond their commercial lifecycles, while revealing the uneven distribution of both labor and access in community-driven technology repair and maintenance.