Posted in: Books, Pop Culture, Technology | Tagged:
The OTW Has Shared A Brief Update On The Archive of Our Own Outage
The Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit organization behind Archive of Our Own and more, has shared a brief update about the ongoing outage.
Article Summary
- Archive of Our Own remains down after a week, and the OTW says its original 2-4 week recovery estimate still appears accurate.
- The latest AO3 outage update confirms queued kudos and subscription emails are legitimate and drafts are being protected.
- OTW warns Archive of Our Own users to avoid scam links, fake mirrors, donation requests, apps, and tester offers.
- Authors are urged not to share personal information with sites reposting scraped AO3 fanfiction while the outage continues.
Archive of Our Own has officially been down for a week, and people are being super normal about it! And by that I mean things are kind of crazy and a bit toxic, depending on which corners of the internet you’re on and which website circles you’re running in. There have been some minor updates, and some sites are posting what appear to be AI-scraped versions of people’s fanfiction at different URLs. If you come across a story of yours on one of these random websites, do not send them your information as a way to get your work taken down. There is a good chance it’s a scam, but more on that in a moment.
AO3 Remains Down, But It Sounds Like Things Are Going Well
First of all, the AO3 status page posted its first official update since October 30th. There wasn’t a ton of information, but it did talk about the kudos and subscription emails some of us might have gotten earlier today and reaffirmed that the 2- 4 week timeline (now 1-3 weeks) remains in place: “While #AO3 remains down, we wanted to share that work to restore AO3 and make changes to prevent future incidents is ongoing and proceeding well. We believe that our original return time estimate remains accurate.
As part of our work to restore AO3, some notification emails (such as subscription updates and kudos announcements) that were queued before AO3 went down in October were released. These emails are real, from us, and are not a reason for concern.
We know that many people are concerned about drafts they had in progress saved on AO3. We are actively working to ensure that drafts are not deleted during this period.
We will provide further updates when we have them.
Posted 1 hour ago. Nov 06, 2026 – 00:00 UTC”
Time For Internet Safety 101 In Light Of The Great AO3 Outage
Four days ago, the people of the OTW took to Tumblr to discuss best internet safety practices in light of what’s happening online now that AO3 is down. A lot of it should be common sense: do not give people logins of any kind for any reason and don’t download stuff from random Google drives if you don’t know the person, but there isn’t anyone out there soliciting donations specifically for this outage, and if they say they are, they are lying: “OTW volunteers appreciate all of the support we’ve received from you while AO3 remains down. We do not have further updates to offer you beyond our earlier October 30 update, but when they become available, they will be released on our status page and other official channels.
While AO3 is down, we wanted to share some important internet safety best practices with all of you:
- Only follow links to fanworks or files from reputable sources that you trust. In general, viewing fanworks on other archives or on social media is safer than downloading or accessing private drives or .zip files shared by others online.
- Be wary of people offering you private access to AO3, requesting information about you, or asking for money to “help bring AO3 back” – these are scams trying to profit from AO3 being down.
- OTW volunteers will not contact you to ask you to send them money privately. All funds to the OTW will always go through the OTW donation form at: otw.org/donate. If someone is asking for money to “help bring AO3 back” and directing you to pay them, this is a scam.
- Any website or source claiming that it can help you access AO3 is lying. AO3 remains down.There are no mirrors through which you can access AO3’s servers or database until AO3 is back up.
- The above bullet includes apps. AO3 does not have an app. Please read Why AO3 Doesn’t Have an Official App for more information.
- We do not recruit testers publicly. If you are being asked to share your personal information to become an OTW tester, this is a scam.
- While we still don’t believe that the user database was stolen, we are also unable to rule it out at this time. As a precaution, we recommend that you change your passwords on any other sites where you use the same password as on AO3. We also advise that you follow other best practices to keep yourself safe:
- Use a secure, unique passwords on every website.
- Store your passwords in a password manager.
- Read our Policy & Abuse committee’s advice on Keeping Your AO3 Account Secure.
Our volunteers are actively working to bring AO3 back to you, answer questions, and provide as many support services as we are able while AO3 is down.
We’d like to thank our community for maintaining the spirit of AO3 by continuing to create and celebrate fanworks. As we navigate this outage, here are a few simple ways you can stay active in the fanworks community:
- Check out the OTW’s other projects, such as Fanlore or Transformative Works and Cultures.
- Keep creating and sharing your fanworks on social media and alternative archives.
- Jump into one of the active fanworks challenges happening on social media now. You can find some of them reblogged here on Tumblr using the tag “Downtime Events.”
There Are Other Sites Probably Posting Your Work; Ignore It
Authors, there have been several websites popping up that appear to have scraped versions of AO3 and are posting people’s work. Many of these sites claim to have good intentions, but numerous red flags suggest otherwise. The biggest one is how much information authors must provide to these websites for their own work to be taken down. It’s clear that whatever database they are drawing from is likely an AI-scraped one because things as simple as fic titles are incomplete. If you come across your work on any of these sites, as much as you don’t want it up there, DO NOT SEND THEM ANY INFORMATION. We’ll figure out other ways, as a community, how to deal with people attempting to make money off of a hobby that has always been utterly disconnected from capitalism.
There has been a lot of incendiary language and hurt feelings in the last week, but remember that for as loud as people on Reddit and X/Twitter might be, even in chronically online spaces like this, they are still not the majority. It’s all going to be fine; fanfic has survived this long; it’ll take more than a couple of weeks of one website being down to bring the entire enterprise down.
Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!
Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!
