#archive locking

[anarchycox]

Consider Archive Locking your Fics

We are what at the fourth, sixth bots and scraping happening on AO3, and for now at least it seems that it can be protected against by archive locking.

Archive locking won't protect you from everything (I had an individual upload my fics under their name on Wattpad) but it will protect you from shitty spam bot comments, from being scraped by AI, from being bot scrape for a bullshit site that is potentially a phishing scheme.

AO3 is free to sign up for. People can make a free email that just exists for AO3 so it can't be tracked on their regular accounts. These days it isn't even a long wait to make an AO3 log in. There is no excuse for not having an account. And if you insist guest is the only way to read AO3, then there are millions of fics to enjoy, but they won't be mine.

It does hurt your stats and comments, I won't lie about that. It might hurt your mental health to have those numbers drop, I can't speak to your personal well being. But I can say it is a relief to know my fics are protected at least a little bit. And honestly I adjusted to the change in my numbers and am now unbothered by the lower kudos count, lower comments - because I also get less anon jackassery.

So yeah, just consider how you feel when you find out yet another scraping bot thing is happening, how gross it feels. Does the less kudos hit harder than that? I dunno, you do. But it is worth considering.

[daviesroyal]

Fanfiction Update:

I know there are some cases where users can't get an account for safety or legal reasons. I'm truly sorry about that. But I'm not willing to expose my work to bad actors for exploitation just to potentially reach a few people.

I'm tired. So very tired of fending off efforts to steal work for money. Very tired of AO3 and other platforms saying "sorry, we'll do what we can within our ToS, but you gotta fight this battle on your own" and not doing anything to change and improve how they protect the creators that use their platforms in good faith.

During the lore.fm debacle (it's recently been announced that the creator is "happy to shut it down" though it's still up on the app stores. I'm waiting for the EU and other legal action already started to nuke it properly), when multiple authors were upset about their work being stolen without so much as a notice from AO3 as to what was happening, when we were talking in the r/AO3 subreddit about how AO3 hadn't made significant changes to their web security after the scrapers and bot attacks, I had a (self-declared, I didn't know how to verify and honestly wasn't willing to pick a fight about it) volunteer tell me that AO3 couldn't make those changes because they would all negatively impact the readers and "readers are just as important as authors."

(I am not going to go into a technical explanation/cybersecurity rant, suffice to say their grasp of how security measures work is... incomplete at best. They're wrong. Several measures could have been implemented with minimal impact to users overall.)

It says a lot about AO3 that they are unwilling to enhance their security to protect authors even a little bit just in case it inconveniences some readers, when this is literally how any website or software makes security decisions: you protect the most people to the best of your ability with the least amount of inconvenience. AO3 is putting convenience over protection.

The fact that a volunteer saw no issue with telling me, during all of this, that I wasn't thinking of the readers and should be making decisions about how my content is used and shared with them as a priority and shouldn't be criticizing AO3 for prioritizing the readers over the authors and their works is galling.

AO3 is supposed to be an archive, where creators can be assured their work will be safe from exploitation or censorship. If it's meant to preserve and protect works, why is it that readers are placed on equal importance? That's like saying a kid could handle the Book of Kells with sticky hands because the "reader is just as important as the author" or work.

I've not only locked my works, but also put them in an unrevealed collection. I have yet to decide whether or not I will reveal them again, or if they will eventually be taken down. AO3 as a platform (and OTW as an organization) would need to show that they're taking creators' concerns about this seriously.

This was not an easy decision for me, and I apologize to anyone out there who was waiting for an update, or marked a fic for later, or even just enjoyed rereading. I hope, one day, I'll be able to put my work up again without worry or fear.

[thai-drama-ao3-stats]

Thai Drama Stats Special Edition:

The Great Archive Lockdown 🔒

Hi folks! In case you weren't aware, there are various scraping bots that trawl through AO3 and use the data for AI training, content mill sites, or other vaguely nefarious purposes. One site, "Fanfic Books", is essentially creating an unauthorized mirror of AO3. Here are some posts about it.

To combat this, many users have recently chosen to "Archive Lock" their fics.

What is Archive Locking?

An archive locked work, or "restricted" work, is only visible to users who are logged into AO3. This prevents anonymous users (and bots that aren't using login credentials) from reading your fic or finding your fic in searches. This doesn't block all scraping bots, but it should keep most of them out.

What does this have to do with fandom stats?

The AO3 scraping I do doesn't use login credentials, so I can't count archive locked fics. That's totally fine! I am in no way telling you to stop archive locking! Lock or unlock to your hearts content!

It does, however, mean that the data I pulled from my Thai Drama AO3 Trends Dashboard this week (July 1 - July 7, 2024) are looking especially strange.

Holy moly! We actually have negative growth. More fics were locked than posted, which is why the Net New is negative. I'd estimate that about 1% of all previously public Thai Drama fics were archive locked this week.

This matches trends on all of AO3. This week, the total number of publicly available fics actually decreased by 0.7% -- and that's including all the new fics being posted!

When did this happen?

The timing for both Thai Drama fandom and all of AO3 is pretty consistent.

For Thai Drama fandom, most of the locking happened on Friday, July 5, but there was also some locking on Sunday.

When we look at all of AO3, it seems like most of the mass-locking happened on July 5th as well, with additional locking happening all throughout the weekend.

Which Thai Drama fandoms were most affected?

When we look at sheer numbers, KinnPorsche, of course, has a lot of newly-locked fics. 3 Will Be Free, My Engineer, and Dark Blue Kiss were locked down a lot as well.

When we look at the top fandoms by negative growth, The Player saw almost all of its fics vanish overnight. 3 Will Be Free was cut neatly in half.

This data is cool I guess, but... so what?

If these numbers are accurate, it represents another sudden and massive shift towards archive locking on AO3.

According to @star-grazing's stats about archive locking in December 2022, the total number of archive locked works on AO3 increased by 70% in just a couple weeks after a reddit post went viral about AI bots scraping AO3 for machine learning material.

Those stats show that in December 2022, 5.79% of AO3 fics were archive locked. When I checked the numbers again today, 9.37% of all works were archive locked.

Using rough estimates, from the last few days of AO3 data, I'd say that the total number of archive locked works increased by 8% since last Thursday (7/4). And trends seem to indicate that the great lockdown is still going!

Anyway...

Thanks for sticking with me! This is a really fun time to be collecting AO3 stats :) If you have more questions, feel free to reach out. I also put some more details under the cut! Thanks y'all!

Are we sure it was archive locking, and not some other data issue?

Er, good question. It's my best guess, and I've tried to rule out other potentially culprits. The AO3 Fandom Trend Analysis Dashboard, which has data about all fandoms on AO3, doesn't seem to show anything amiss. Their data uses login credentials, meaning they can count archive locked fics.

I also went through several tags manually while logged in and logged out to compare numbers from this week to previous weeks. It doesn't seem like there was a mass deletion or retag that I could see.

I also used the "restricted:true" search operator to search for archive locked fics while logged in. A lot of those missing fics pop back up!

I absolutely welcome other theories though, if you think of one!

Is this still happening?

Seemingly yes, for Thai Dramas at least! When I checked the "All Thai Dramas" AO3 search this morning, the total number of Thai Drama fics had dropped below the 40K mark - lower than when I first started keeping track a month ago!

We probably have a lot more archive locking in our future!

How do I archive lock my own fics?

There's a really good tutorial over here.

Help! I don't have an AO3 account, so I can't read all these archive locked fics anymore.

Please message me! I have some spare invites.

Which fandoms are the most "locked down"?

I'm not sure, but there is a Fanlore article about Hockey RPF and the Fourth Wall which provides some comparison stats. Hockey fandom has traditionally been one of the most locked down fandoms; less than half of hockey rpf fics are publicly available.

You can also peruse this AO3 search to see all archive locked fics.

[bronkdoes-stuff]

Me when the story that obviously isn’t going to have a happy ending doesn’t have a happy ending

[staff]

Tumblr Tuesday: Huevember

Hues, colors, shades. From pink to red to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple. You know what has those? Huevember. This Huevember, like other Huevembers before it, is demonstrating the delightful and very broad spectrum of fandom here on Tumblr (we've snuck a couple OCs in here, too, because they were too good to leave out). You have a few more days to get involved in one of the many challenges, or you could just sit back and enjoy these hues 🌈

@mflanart:

@razelv0:

@tuttilium:

@ellohcee:

@mimicha-arts:

@izzybluebell:

@otherwolves:

@floweroflaurelin:

@melognut:

@incaseyouart:

@oatmealdoodles:

@m-oshun:

@jagalart:

@carlozw:

@jazzkolart:

@mx-paisley:

[the-lone-huntress]

Seems it's time to share this again...

So, I keep seeing people talking about wanting to bulk update their fic settings to be viewable for registered users only. This feature actually can be found in your AO3 settings and while this might not be a very glamourous infographic, it is fairly easy to do.

[stompandhollar]

rough WIP of daisy and jon in the buried that’s too intimidating for me to finish

[catilinas]

laughed at my own bad joke about the conclave (‘they should elect cardinal pizzaballa and he should choose the papal name ‘eroni’ so we have ‘pope eroni’ on our pizza’) and then experienced sudden sharp pain in my lower right ribs and couldn’t move or breathe properly for like 20 minutes. called my mother (doctor) and she said it was god telling me not to joke about the pope. awesome 👴👍

[ms-demeanor]

I don't care about data scraping from ao3 (or tbh from anywhere) because it's fair use to take preexisting works and transform them (including by using them to train an LLM), which is the entire legal basis of how the OTW functions.

[reonaissance]

he won. he won. he won with his last goal. his brain stopped working in the heat of the moment, not thinking about what he was going to do next.

and out of reflex, he ran to you. he effortlessly jumped over the barrier which separated field and tribunes and ran to you. you immediately jumped at him in joy, knocking the remaining air out of his lungs with a crushing hug.

“you won!” you cheered.

without thinking, he picked you up and hid your face in the crook of his neck. after he made sure you were properly tucked in his arm, he jumped over the barrier again and ran to his teammates. when he stopped in the middle of the field, he sat you on his shoulder, holding you like a trophy— his trophy.

the whole ceremony over, you were on his shoulder, being shown off to the whole world to see. and when he got the trophy handed, he gave it to you. holding it up in the air, you looked down at him, smiling and giggling. your gaze went up to the shiny trophy in your hands, knowing it was your husband who shot the winning goal.

and after this little action of his, you found plenty enquiries of from modeling agencies asking you to model for them.

— ITOSHI RIN, Isagi Yoichi, Mikage Reo

© reonaissance | dividers by @/cafekitsune

[zirconpetals]

How to lock your fanfiction on ao3 in bulk

First go to your Profile

Scroll down until you see the "Edit my works" button

After clicking it you'll end up in the "Edit Multiple Works" section

Choose the works you want to lock. You can pick all of them or just the specific ones. Then click the "Edit" button.

Scroll down until the "Privacy" section. "Visibility" would have "Only show to registered users" option. This is what you need to choose to lock the fics.

You can change other stuff if you want, like maybe add comment moderation.

Click "Update All Works" to save.

There you go!

[anarchycox]

Continued Thoughts on Archive Locking

Part 1

Part 2

Hello all, welcome back to the series of my thoughts about archive locking fic.

Hit my first real test of it affecting readership.

I write a pool noodle of a ship. This is not an exaggeration. There are 7 fics - one of which is a parody according to its own tags, a couple are just huge lists of ship the character with everybody and 3 are mine.

(The ship is Smoker/Sanji from One Piece if you care).

I posted Part 3 in the series yesterday. Parts 1 and 2 were put up before I archive locked, part 3 after.

And yeah this is where having the locking hurts.

Part 1:  Kudos: 185 Bookmarks: 19 Hits: 1609

Part 2:  Kudos: 67 Bookmarks: 6 Hits: 509

Part 3:  Kudos: 12 Hits: 67

Part 3 has only been up about twenty four hours, so it will get a bit more love, but still, a pretty clear picture is painted by the numbers.

I would say this is the clearest evidence that not having guest accounts see your work will impact viewership and response. Unless you specifically follow me, eyes just won’t see this pop up.

The big question is how does that impact me?

Sucks a bit, I’ll be honest. I think it is a rare pair that deserves more attention. It is hot as hell. 

My options are deal with less readership, unarchive lock pool noodle ships, or unarchive lock everything. And currently? I am still very much in the benefits outweigh the cost. I like worrying less about hate because comments about my spelling and grammar tended to be guest accounts. I like knowing there is another line of security between me and my job reading my fic. And I really like not dealing with spam bots. 

I won’t lie and say it didn’t impact me at all, but it was more a slow head nod and saying now that’s a damn shame and then moving on to plan the next random thing I want to write. 

So that’s where it is currently at.

[r4bbitmilk]

lol i got paid to bully baby rin

[luvseisagi]

—spiderman: across the wrong universe. 🕸️

when you hit rock bottom in your own world, maybe falling into the wrong one is exactly what you need to set it right. unless, of course, you’re the glitch.

smau ft. itoshi rin, isagi yoichi. chigiri, reo, nagi, bachira, kunigami, sae.

summary. isagi’s superhero and personal lives are falling apart—his girlfriend dumps him, he gets fired, and the internet hates him after one very bad (and slightly viral) day. then, by accidentally activating his broken multiverse watch, he’s thrown into another timeline —in this universe, rin is a struggling, not-so-famous new spiderman juggling online college, one very nosy fan club, and a shared cat. the world is glitching, reality feels off, and no one can tell what—or who—is causing it. and somehow, in the middle of all this chaos, there’s you. the one person who might save the multiverse —or break it for good. contains. fem!reader x rin, fem!reader x isagi. spiderman!au, nyc based, crack, slice of life. angst/hurt comfort. suicide mention, cussing and kms jokes. there are not character deaths. a lot of spiderman lore mainly from the miles morales movies. canon events !! rin is emotionally constipated, isagi's ex is literally the you from another universe. everyone’s at least a little ooc. nagireo and kunigiri (kinda) mixes smau + narration. timestamps, likes, etc are not important for the story. author’s note. this is going to be a bit long, plot-heavy, and not just romance focused. main love interest is rin (so no love triangle). isagi’s arc is complicated. i’ll try to update weekly, but uni + work are fighting me irl. thanks for reading, enjoy :)

—masterlist 🕷️. ᓚᘏᗢ

narrated chapters will be indicated with a 🕷️. each chapter has it's own content warnings.

profiles 01. profiles 02. profiles 03.

prologue. welcome to new york.

i.

chapter 01. movie night and meetings. chapter 02. suit rebranding. chapter 03. multitasker.

ii.

chapter 04. the neighbor downstairs. chapter 05. there's two of them ?! chapter 06. on suicide watch chapter 07. rooftop talk (🕷️)

iii.

chapter 08. side quest. chapter 09. caramel iced coffee (🕷️) chapter 10. the voices. chapter 11. partners in crime.

iv.

chapter 12. academic weapon. chapter 13. plan a vs plan b. chapter 14. canon event i: the loss. (🕷️) chapter 15. canon event ii: the fall. (🕷️) chapter 16. interlude: regret. chapter 17. canon event iii: the fracture. (🕷️) chapter 18. spiderfucked. chapter 19. oh... oh! chapter 20. the anomaly.

v.

chapter 21. chapter 22.

archive

tags (closed) ౨ৎ @levihanmyotp @inojuuy @blu3-l0v3r @rohfulike @inosukehana @cruziival72 @kuromixheartzzz @koko-77 @kurona-theshark @yoichiin @elliehenry24 @kuronarnze @sugarcor3 @ranzess @lovingmayday @vinzcoke @soph1sticatedly @l0v3ly-st4rs @milkteeboba @ilovewonyo @mivqko @beepbopzlorp @thatmf-jay @angelhqlo1111 @jnkosstuff @ssngkk @c4ttheart @risagichi @neeeooon @emicatz @chokifandom @n0tbelle @veyyluvezcats @saekisserfr @scoosh4you @ihsoti @nana7nana777 @sillymil @tnt-kokoo @miss-aesthetic-13 .ᐟ

﹫luvseisagi, june 2025.

[automatonwithautonomy]

man, what is it with queers and stabbing? we know there's other ways of expressing love right?

[monakisu]

lawlight toxic yuri i never posted