#anti archive of our own

[azuremist]

TIL that someone who wrote a 16k-word racist screed on AO3 in 2016, and who was banned from cons and gift exchanges because she made people of color feel unsafe, later became the the head of AO3’s abuse team for YEARS, AND wrote their protocols on racism!

[themoonking]

when people bring up the racism, homophobia, transphobia, romanticization of domestic abuse / rape / pedophilia / incest, literal actual written porn of literal actual real life flesh and blood children, et cetera et cetera on archive of our own, one of the ao3 stannies’ main defenses is “you can just filter out the tags if you don’t want to see that!” when that defense has no fucking legs to stand on.

ao3 is not an archive, it is barely even a website: a rant <3 (very long)

ignoring the fact that it’s a problem that all of that is permitted on the site in the first place (i guess child porn and racism are fine, and the people who allow it on their platform are fine, as long as i, personally, do not see it), that defense literally means nothing. it’s assuming that every little thing on ao3 is tagged properly and it absolutely is not, and if you think it is you are dumber than rocks. i mean for fuck’s sake, just touching on archive warnings and not tags, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is literally a valid option for fic authors to use when it should fucking not be.

if someone is a freak who thinks that pedo shit is hot, they might not tag it as “rape” (archive warnings OR tags). i’ve literally seen underage father/son rape porn with no trigger warning tags but “child abuse if you squint”. IF YOU SQUINT. if someone thinks that domestic abuse is actually cool and sexy when attractive people do it, they might not tag it as “abuse”. if someone is a freak who likes incest, but bends over backwards to justify it by only shipping adopted family members, then they tell themselves that they don’t view it as incest, and might not tag it as “incest”. if someone is a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, et cetera and they wrote bigotry into their fic (or else wrote a deliberate troll fic to trigger people on purpose), do you really think they’re going to tag it as racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera? and some people get kicks out of writing purposefully triggering content and either leaving it untagged or mistagging it so that people will read it unsuspectingly.

even for just general content tags, it’s a mess. people just forget to tag things all the time. people deliberately won’t tag the endgame ship of their fic because “it’s a spoiler heehee”. people use the romantic or sexual “x / y” tag instead of the platonic or otherwise “x & y” tag, sometimes by mistake sometimes on purpose. it’s a joked about issue how people will tag characters or ships that appear in their fic for two sentences.

there’s no standardization of tags, which is a pretty obvious problem. what first comes to mind is the “dead dove: do not eat” tag which should just not be a tag at all because it just has no meaning. depending on the individual fic writer using it, it could mean anything from “literally the most sickening and depraved thing you’ve ever read in your life” to “horror w/ gore”. but it applies to other vague tags too - different fic writers will have different ideas of what the tag means.

in addition to that, what is and isn’t made a filterable tag, what tags are made synonymous, et cetera, is entirely up to the whims of the site staff. as an example, if you’re trying to look for fanfiction of a singular animated disney movie, the infinite crossovers with other disney movies will not actually be counted as crossovers (which they are) because they’re classified as the “disney theatrical animated universe” (which isn’t a fucking thing), so you can’t filter them out the “exclude crossovers” way. if you try to filter out the fandom tag “disney theatrical animated universe”, it’ll show up with zero fics because that tag is synonymous with every disney animated film (regardless of if the fic author actually used the tag “disney theatrical animated universe” or not), thus also filtering out the one you actually wanted to find.

and do not get me fucking started on the “all media types tags”, which also just shouldn’t be a thing because it makes it fucking impossible to find the specific fics you’re looking for. some people use it in place of tagging a specific canon / adaptation when their fic very clearly draws from one specific canon / adaptation, and you can’t filter it out because it’s synonymous with every fandom tag under its umbrella.

as an example of the issues of both the “all media types” tag and mistagging in general: as a fan of the witcher books, it used to be a fucking ordeal to find fanfiction specifically for the books (post netflix show release). some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag their fics with the book fandom tag in addition to (or even in place of!!) the show fandom tag when their fics were unquestionably show-specific, meaning i could not simply search only in the book fandom tag. i could not simply filter out the show tag, because some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag as fucking “all media types”, when their fics were unquestionably show-specific. and alas, i could not filter out “all media types” and the show tag, so that i see only those fics which have been deliberately and exclusively tagged as the book, not only because as mentioned some show fans would tag their show fics with only the book tag, but also because the fucking all media types tag filters out the book tag as well, leaving me with zero fucking fics REGARDLESS of if the author actually used the “all media types” tag. now, thankfully, i’ve thankfully seen this issue in this specific fandom lessen, but it still occurs in other fandoms and i guarantee that it didn’t lessen in the witcher fandom because of any fixing of the site on the part of ao3 staff.

another common defense of ao3 freaks is that it’s an “archive”, and therefore can’t get rid of anything anyone posts, and disregarding the fact that that is not how archives fucking work, they don’t just allow anything and also ao3 DOES get rid of fics... when they say that they don’t like proshippers, apparently, archives have... you know... archivists. they have someone or a team of someones making sure that everything in the archive is *properly fucking categorized*. they have someone or multiple someones making sure that everything they recieve (1) belongs there and (2) is properly labeled and organized. same for libraries. meaning that if ao3 really were an archive and not a sub par fanfiction website, they’d have something like that in place. something as simple as a report button for fics with a review team that will see if something’s been mis- or untagged. they’d have some kind of standardization of tags (especially the warning / trigger tags) and have proper tagging enforced in some way. and then they could also do something like stop being spineless racists, queerphobes, and pedos have the barest minimum of content guidelines saying that you can’t post fucking hate speech.

if something is mistagged or untagged, the most you can do is leave a comment politely asking that the author fix the issue, and then hope and pray that they do that. and if that person thinks [insert form of abuse] is hot, or if they’re just straight up a bigot that wrote bigotry into their fics to be bigoted, or they’re a troll that gets kick out of deliberately traumatizing people by tricking them into reading their mis/untagged fics, they might not! AND if you see a major tagging issue on an orphaned work, or a work that has an inactive author / hasn’t been updated in forever, good fucking luck getting even a negative response.

you can’t permanently block tags (i mean even tumblr.hell has that), meaning that if you would like to search for fic without coming across something troubling, triggering, or just something you don’t like, you have to either (1) do a work around by having a bookmarked link for every fandom you’re in or every character you like with all of your tags already blocked, (2) download browser extensions that do the work for ao3 because they can’t be bothered themselves, or (3) input every individual tag every time you search ao3 and don’t forget that all of those options only fucking work at all when everything is tagged properly, and we’ve already established its not. you also can’t actually block people (you can only prevent them from commenting) meaning that if there’s a specific person you’d like to stay away from your fics or a specific fic author that you don’t like and would like to stop seeing their fics clogging up the tag, you’re out of luck (though for the latter you could insert “-[username]” into the “search within results” box, but then uh oh we’re right back around to having to input that every time or have a bookmark)

their archive warning system is shit. first of all it’s functionally useless because, as mentioned, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is an option. what’s the fucking point of special required archive warnings if you’re going to allow people to opt out anyway. second of all, aside from “chose not to use warnings” and “no warnings apply”, the only warnings are “major character death”, “graphic depictions of violence”, “rape/non-con”, and “underage”. disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t be allowing porn of underage characters in the first place (but i’m talking to a brick wall on that issue) and that “non-con” (and “dub-con”) as terminology needs to die, it’s just fucking rape lets not use weasel words... this is a paltry list of possible warnings. there’s no official warnings for depictions of: domestic abuse, animal abuse, depictions of racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera, suicide, self harm, et cetera et cetera. and we return to the issue of standardization of tags. in your required archive warnings at very least, there should be a standardization of what these mean, but ao3′s own faq is just like “ehh... you decide. we’ll leave it up to you”. what qualifies as graphic depictions of violence? two people may write the same level of violence, but qualify “graphic” differently, and make different decisions regarding their warnings. and we also return to the issue of: if a freak doesn’t see something that is clearly rape as rape, they might not tag it as such.

this website gets a disgustingly large amount of money every year that it doesn’t fucking do anything with. it’s been over a decade and they’re still in fucking beta. features that would actually be useful, like an actual block system, don’t exist. they technically have a report system for abuse and harassment and such, but apparently what they qualify as abuse and harassment is fickle. ao3 defenders seem to be very proud of the legal work they do for fandom / fanfic authors, but they set aside a very small amount of the money they get every year for legal advocacy, and they actually use even less of that, because it’s not the early 2000s “anne rice hates fanfiction” era anymore - you aren’t going to get fucking sued for writing fanfiction in the first place. based on their own self-reported yearly cost of upkeep, they literally already have enough money to run the site as they are now for the next twenty years.

once again: ao3 is not an archive. it is not a library. it is barely a even a website.

[iri-desky]

GET KOSA TRENDING.

STOP SCROLLING NOW!

AS OF FEBRUARY 21ST, 2024, WE GOT FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE DAY OF DECISION OF THE KOSA BILL, WHICH WILL CAUSE MASS CENSORSHIP ROUND THE INTERNET IF PASSED. WE NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT THIS AND CONTRIBUTE. I'M NOT GIVING UP ON YOU ALL.

(IMPORTANT UPDATE: Kosa will not necessarily pass on the 26th. It only has the support to pass in Senate, and we STILL HAVE TIME. That being said, time is of the essence.)

WE'RE DOWN TO THE WIRE BUT WE CAN'T GIVE UP YET. IF WE GIVE UP, EVERYTHING IS OVER. IF WE DON'T, AT LEAST WE HAVE A CHANCE.

I'M THE ONE WHO SOUNDED THE ALARM, AND I'M NOT GOING TO CURL UP AND DIE YET.

Reblog this post in every LEGAL way you can under the Tumblr guidelines with the appropriate tags. TELL AND TAG EVERYONE YOU KNOW, then add the tags to see below... and more if you can think of any complying.

Visit badinternetbills.com if you want to find a way to defeat KOSA. It WILL NOT take much of your time. Reblog with any other information or sources, too-- but make sure to reblog if you can.

Reblog if you support lgbtq+ content.

Reblog if you support questioning queer youth and/or abused youth getting the information they need.

Reblog if you support Ao3 and/or other sites that wholeheartedly preserve talentedly made media.

Reblog if you're going to repost this on other sites than Tumblr and spread the word across Twitter, Tik Tok, Pinterest, or elsewhere, alongside the link to badinternetbills.com.

Reblog if you think KOSA is unfair and shouldn't be anyone's problem -- including the adults ALL OVER THE DAMN EARTH forced to face the mass censorship it causes because "think of the American Children!".

Reblog if you support internet activism and Palestine.

Reblog if you hate fascism or censorship, and don't want actually serious and helpful conversations censored on the internet.

Reblog if you value the internet in any way at all whatsoever.

CHECK THIS PETITION, TOO! https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-kosa?recruiter=1331807538&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf&recruited_by_id=57368c40-d0fd-11ee-98f7-2175430f819f&share_bandit_exp=initial-36809664-en-US

(Also, please reblog with at least "stop kosa" as a tag and not "kosa". I made the mistake of not adding just "kosa" as a tag...)

We won't let this stand any longer. Let's start a riot and get this trending.

[shaftking]

Ao3 is actually massively culturally important and very very good at being what it is. I’m so serious when I say that ao3 needs to be protected as the anti censorship, by fans for fans, nonprofit, volunteer run, expertly designed archival site that it is. You don’t have to read or like fanfiction to understand that on principle, ao3 is a site that should be defended.

[sleep-deprived-person]

So apparently KOSA (2024 edition) is getting either thrown out until next year or put into effect in six days. That was a guesstimate based on a different person saying that's when Congress is back in session and may be false.

Update that's going in the main post at the top: it has enough support to pass Congress.

It failed the last two times because people were voting against it.

This time, KOSA has traction among the pro-LGBTQ parties. Because nobody is fucking calling their bullshit and screaming from the rooftops that calling it the "Kids Online Safety Act" is misleading.

What will it passing do?

Nothing much, only prevent any education on LGBTQIA+ (it's that stupid fucking argument about us grooming kids again), shut down nearly every fandom space on the internet, and make it required for most big tech companies to have your ID.

Want to have resources for kids to discover their identity readily available? Yes? Then fucking speak up against this stupid fucking bill.

Fandom spaces like Tumblr, Twitter (? I thought the MAGA assholes liked Musk?), Tiktok, Archive Of Our Own, and any other website that hosts fanfic or fanart? Either shut down permanently, forced to uproot to a different country and down for a while (best case scenario, and they likely won't be able to send any data, and therefore fanfics, to the US), or gutted so that you only get to put G rated cishet ships on there, if any shipping at all. How to avoid that? I've already said it: Call your fucking representatives.

Want to avoid the fucking dystopic task of being legally obligated to give big tech your government issue ID? Again, cause an uproar. Call your goddamned representatives.

If they can pass this, the ripple effects could be catastrophic.

So, for fuck's sake, any Americans that can impact this stupid fucking bill and see this? Do everything in your power to shut it down because you have until February twenty sixth (26th) to send this bill back to where it belongs.

And if you can't do that? Reblog, copy my tags, and boost the signal.

Sorry not sorry for ranting, making you scroll through that, and swearing a probably excessive amount, but KOSA is a bill with a GLOBAL IMPACT being passed by ONE COUNTRY because some old people are scared of two guys with who were told they were girls kissing within five hundred miles of a child. Fuck this shit, I shouldn't have to worry about bad bills in America but I fucking do because I use the internet and would like to avoid mass censorship. Fuck this, fuck conservatives, and fuck the fact that some boomers make your country's policies.

Now, if you won't mind me, I'm going to be up until three in the morning downloading fanfiction or copying and pasting them into a a text file if I can't so I can read them by the end of the week.

[sagegarnish]

AO3 now has a tag for AI works!!! That means you can filter it out!* To filter it from your account, and never see any of it again, follow these steps.

- First, log in to your AO3 account

- Click on this link or paste this in your browser bar

https://archiveofourown.org/skins/new?skin_type=Skin

- Set "Type" to "Site Skin"

- Set "Title" to whatever you want (Something like “No AI” so you'll know what Skin you just made)

- Then click into the large "CSS" box and paste all of the bolded text below - hit the "Submit" button

.blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/Created%20Using%20Generative%20AI/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI-Generated%20Text/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI%20Generated%20Text/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI%20Generated%20Fic/works" i]), .blurb:has(a[href*="/tags/AI-Generated%20Images/works" i]) { display: none !important; }

- Hit "Use"

Presto!

No more AI fics or art in your results! (assuming everyone tagged properly and your browser has the flags enabled)

A blocklist to be used with the Permablocking Specific Tags - Site Skin tutorial by Eli0t

*browser dependent

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

-> people stealing, binding and selling fics on Etsy, risking everything that AO3 has built since the Anne Rice lawsuits

-> AI scraping being everywhere and Gen Z seeing nothing wrong with using AI to "help" fanfiction or outright "write it" for them, while older fanfic authors have struggled for years to perfect the style you love

-> comments being down across the board and consumption culture being at an all time high. a fic gets 800 notes practically overnight and doesn't get a single comment (and sometimes I literally have to beg for comments/feedback on my fics when I know that hundreds of people are reading them)

-> me, grinding my teeth while pouring my heart and soul into a 40k fic that I know will be forgotten by fandom in a month or could possibly be stolen to be sold as a "novel": I do this because I love this. I do this because I love this. I do this because it's my passion. I don't want to quit doing something that I love so much.

[timeoflittlebells]

KOSA is gross, but AO3 will likely go unharmed

I've seen a LOT of people talking about how if KOSA passes, it would forced AO3 to either scramble to find somewhere to operate outside of the United States, or would force them to take down most of (if not all) of the content uploaded to the site.

KOSA primarily focuses on commercial platforms, like Twitter and Tumblr. The OTW, a nonprofit organization, is mostly out of the bills jurisdiction, though we don't know which exact laws proposed in the bill could end up affecting OTW and other nonprofits.

In fact, AO3 News published this all the way back in September of last year:

The tl;dr is that the OTW and AO3 are not currently implicated by KOSA and many of the other bills because of our nonprofit status (most of the proposed laws only apply to for-profit institutions). This means the operations of the OTW and the AO3 wouldn’t be directly impacted by these bills.

I am fully against KOSA passing, as with everyone else on this website with at least some sense of intelligence, but some of the things I've seen people posting are ill informed. We need to keep fighting this disgusting censorship garbage, but we can at least breathe a slight sigh of relief knowing that at least one beloved website is unlikely to get caught in the fire.

[otterandterrier]

An explanation:

In 2022, Common Crawl scrapped Ao3 to train AI. In December of the same year, Ao3 added code to stop it from happening again. However, as they explain, "Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site." This means that individual scrapers can still collect data, even on a large scale, although they're working to find a solution to this. They're also, at the moment, not banning AI-generated works.

In the meantime, they recommend restricting works to registered users only. However, and as they know, this isn't an ideal or ultimate solution.

First, because it would add a barrier to legitimate users who want to access the site without an account for different reasons.

Second, because real registered users who think they're entitled to your work can still steal it and feed it to AI for personal use, which is something people are already bragging about.

And third, because bots can still create accounts for mass scraping--in fact, there's a concerning wave of obvious bot comments happening right now, and speculation is that it's related to making AI tools come off as legitimate traffic.

Personally, I'm very concerned and considering restricting my works. But I also hate that we're being put in this position, I don't think it's fair to me or my readers, and I'm reluctant of gatekeeping my fic from legitimate readers.

So I wanted to see where other writers stand right now, and I also wanted to show readers who might be considering stealing fic with AI "because it was abandoned" or whatever your shitty excuse is the damage that you're contributing to. Fandom is not a market. You're not entitled to our work, even if it's abandoned.

I might hate myself for this later, but please reblog for a larger sample size!! You're welcome to add alternative solutions, thoughts, etc., but if you add any obnoxious comments about how stealing people's art with AI is good, actually, and fandom creators are meanies, I will break into your house and bite you.

[azuremist]

If you’re just as displeased about the organization that runs AO3 kicking someone for being pro-Palestine (source 1) (source 2) as I am, here are some things you can do…

Use the OTW contact form and the AO3 feedback form to voice your displeasure. Additionally, inform them exactly how you will be withdrawing support until this issue is resolved.

Stop donating to AO3. This is an obvious one, but important. If you have previously donated, but will no longer be doing so, be sure to say it in your feedback form submission!

Switch fanfiction sites. Both for reading, AND for uploading. Alternatives include WattPad, Fanfiction.net, Dreamwidth, Quotev, tumblr itself, or even hosting your fanfiction on a site of your own, via Neocities. Don’t want to stop using AO3’s tagging system? Check out SquidgeWorld, which uses AO3’s open-source code. It even has rules against CSEM and AI scraping! While AO3 doesn’t get money from ad revenue, seeing the number of visitors drop will certainly get the message across.

Encourage others to do the same, and spread the word!

[marxism-leninism-meowism]

The OTW & Genocide

I truly apologize for taking so long to post this, but here's the compilation of screenshots I collected from the events that led to my departure from the OTW.

The document is not as extensive as I'd hoped to make it, due to personal issues IRL, but it's been long enough. I needed to just get this stuff out there.

[tellme-o-muse]

How dark do you like it??

[fandomeldersintheirthirties]

Antis: Liking things from nastybad creators is supporting them and you're an evil person if you even breathe in a direction of nastybad creator's work

Also antis: AO3 is super nastybad site run by evil nastybad people. Anyway read my fics here - *lik to AO3 profile*

[janetbrown711]

friendly reminder to NOT donate to Ao3 this season !!!! The staff are incredibly zionist and DO NOT deserve your money, NOR can they be trusted with it !!!

[frownyalfred]

anti shipping DNIs and lists in fics are so wild. it’s like going to an ice cream store and ordering strawberry and while the worker hands it to you they start going off about how gross chocolate is and how much they hate it.

“Hi could I have a little superbat—”

“DRACO/HARRY IS DISGUSTING!”

“…..uh, okay. can I….can I just have some superbat please?”