VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

❗VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION ❗

Hello, my fellow fanwork creators. Sorry to interrupt, but there's an important information you all should pay attention to.

In short, everyone who is eligible to vote for the election of OTW (they run AO3 and Fanlore), should vote against the candidate Tiffany G. If you have donated over 10$ to AO3 in the past year, you are eligible to vote for yourself, and for us, for every Archive of Our Own user, especially the creators in China. This is a very serious question.

In Tiffany's statement, they want to build a more strict censorship policy in AO3. They also talked about limiting the adult content so this website would "have a better image to public". And they said China banned AO3 because of "pedophilic content" but as a Chinese myself, we all know it's just because my country prohibits any sex-related website. So basically, if this Tiffany succeed to get a seat of OTW, AO3 will face more strict censorship, limited adult content, and for we, for Chinese users, the result would be more catastrophic.

Tiffany G also mentioned that they work in a governmental organisation in China. Just consider why a pro-censorship, fandom newbie(Tiffany said it themself), and government staff wants to run for the election of an organisation that is holistically against their agenda. In my personal worst imagination, once they got the seat, they will immediately pack all the information of Chinese users in AO3 and report them to the Government. The consequence will be horrible.

Please, vote for yourself, for us, and for the future of our favourite fanwork site. If you are not an eligible voter and you wanna do something, please let more people receive this information. Thank you.

Hii!

I don’t understand what’s going on with AO3 and the election? I’ve been using it for about a year so this is all new to me! Is Tiffany getting elected actually bad?

I hate censorship, so seeing posts about them censoring stuff is concerning but idk how much truth to it there is 😳

I just want to be informed, and understand!

Hi! Welcome to AO3:)

since I'm not sure how much you know already, the background (background as interpreted by me: I am not speaking on behalf of the OTW) is: Ao3 is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that also runs Fanlore and publishes Transformative Works & Cultures. Anyone who has donated $10 to the OTW in the last year, and chooses "yes I want to be a member" at checkout is an OTW member. (This is not the same as having an ao3 account.) Every year, there is an election to fill either 2 or 3 seats on the Board of Directors. OTW Members (i.e. people who donated between 7/1/21 and 6/30/22, in this case) get to vote on this.

Most of the time, this election is only really followed by people on fail_fandomanon. Sometimes, it isn't.

Things the Board of Directors does: writes posts to send out to the general public when Things Are Happening (the recent csam attacks, the requests for more antiracism measures.) Writes posts to send to volunteers when Things Are Happening (see prev.) Keeps track of what all the committees are doing and how it ties in with whatever the strategic plan says they should be doing. Deals with the IRS/US laws. Approves large funding requests. Deals with emails that someone else has deemed outside their own wheelhouse. Herds cats. Proposes priorities. Points at something shiny, pats the org on the flank, and says "walk that way, walk that way!! Come on buddy, you can do it!!". etc etc etc.

Things the Board of Directors doesn't do: unilaterally determine ao3 content policy. Let us use the word "porn" on ao3 drive merch. Make decisions that are going greatly affect other volunteers' work without input and some level of agreement from said volunteers.

Anyway. This year, one of the five candidates for the three open board seats is Tiffany G. (More information about all the candidates and their platforms is at https://elections.transformativeworks.org)

Tiffany is a tag wrangler from an unspecified country that is, from context, assumed to be China. The candidate Q&A can be read here. Her answers were a little bit confusing, but she said she wanted to update the ToS policies on 'pedophilic and illegal content' because, quote, "people think we host child porn content and such things... It might... be helpful to clarify that to the public." Further down she said:

a) I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community. So in general, we have to do something to change. Things like making the rating system more specific and obvious to users will be what I want to do. b) Not really restricting the content being posted. I hope it is like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect. And all of these are not surprising to people who do not wish to see this.

I took this to mean "she wants to clarify to outsiders that ao3 does not host csam, is not only for erotica, and update the ratings and warnings system." I don't think that those things are necessary or should be a focus of the org, which is part of why I didn't vote for her.

Other people took it to mean "Tiffany is against pornographic or underage works and wants them to be banned." Some people took this, combined with her nationality, to the conclusion of "Tiffany is a secret plant of the Chinese Communist Party who wants to join the board, get all the ao3 user data, and then have the users from mainland China arrested" (despite the fact that this is not information the board would have access to, if for no other reason than ao3 is blocked in China so anyone trying to view the site from mainland china has to use a VPN anyway.) Some people are upset that the OTW elections committee "allowed" her to run in the first place, because they think that not letting anyone with opinions the current board or elections committee didn't like is an absolutely great precedent to set.

There are a bunch of comments on tw.org, and some in fail_fandomanon, that give more context to her comments in terms of Chinese fandom (though most posters still disagree with her position.)

This got... longer than planned. But to the question "Is tiffany getting elected actually bad" - If my interpretation of her statements are correct, I think it would be annoying, because she does not have the experience I think that being on the Board requires, and focuses on priorities I disagree with. Which isn't to say she'd never have a valuable perspective or ideas about something, but there are four other candidates that I think are much better suited to it at this point in time. If the people who think she is an antishipper bent on censorship are correct, she could probably make life very annoying for the rest of the board-- but considering the rest of them are not pro-censorship, I can't see how she'd have much influence in that direction in the org as a whole.

If the people who think she's doing espionage on behalf of the CCP are correct, then... look, I can't even finish that sentence because I find the idea of the CCP deciding that a) they need to get ao3 user data and b) the way to do that is to run a clearly unqualified candidate in a public board election absurd.

the tl;dr of this tl;dr is that there's a lot of fearmongering going around, and a lot of accusations and hate (and racism. let’s be real a lot of this is racism) directed her way. I don't know her, so I don't know what her "real" opinions are, but regardless of who wins the board election, ao3 is not going to be censored any time soon.

if for no other reason than if the Abuse team was told on top of all their other work, they now had to assess and remove fics reported for being "problematic", they would say "we'd prefer not to" and then proceed to not do it.

It's awesome that people are realizing the board elections and OTW membership are a thing now, though. We kept talking about how to encourage membership, and "running a very dramatic and wanky election" did not occur to us. In retrospect, I don't know why.

On the subject of blocking, I think entering a new fandom and blocking a huge section of it straight away is self care at this point. If I read any post along the lines of "if you like this fictional thing then you are..." I block immediately. If a friend knows the fandom, I follow their advice and block the people they suggest too after a quick scroll (I know a lot of people do this). Fandom isn't a community anymore. It's finding a small handful of people to enjoy the thing with and hiding from everyone else.

I read a post on Twitter that talked about how old school fan culture was dying, and how preemptively blocking/antis were killing fandom because it was forcing people to engage and communicate less. I was sad to realize I was part of the problem, but I've had so many bad experiences. I preemptively block based on a particular ship and two characters in A fandom, because of how horribly disgusting the fans are (to each other, to people who like something different, and the content they create is often squicky/poorly tagged). I realize this is almost "anti" behaviour (judging people's character for their fictional tastes), but it was endemic. I don't harass, I walk away silently and filter them out. So hopefully not as bad?

The final straw for me was the "antis in disguise". People who profess to love Dead Dove content (and also write it), but then are aggressive/vile to people who like/don't like different characters, forms of canon, etc, and have extensive trigger lists in their servers, while telling people the right way to fandom (which is to only like what they do). For me, the only "right way" is to let people love their thing and don't harass, while making content for your thing. I was in one for an IP where hunting, death and murder were a huge part of the narrative... and death is on the trigger list. Any and all mentions of it. Yes. Even "that's so funny, I'm deceased".

I'm sorry for the ramble. I have a lot of feelings about being guilted for blocking and setting up boundaries. Especially one person using their RSD to claim they were being bullied! Fandom is mad these days. Mad!

—

I die laughing every time I see someone who thinks they’ve been around a long time but who is somehow still such a n00b that they could say blocking kills old fandom culture.

You know what kills oldschool fandom culture? TWITTER

It’s short form quips. Oldschool fandom was interminable tl;dr. It’s open and public. Oldschool fandom was invite-only with dense webs of social connections required to access it and a natural result of being in it. Some people took their old friendships to twitter with them, but if they want to know why things feel different now, it’s because they went to that piece of shit website. That’s not the fault of the rest of us.

Back in the day, m/m shippers often found a little group of their own people and hid from the haters. Those few tragic souls who liked whatsherface from the last season of Beauty and the Beast did the same. Anime fans weren’t always in the buddy cop fandoms and vice versa, except for FAKE. Fandom has never been just one community. That’s an illusion born of nostalgia and planting one’s head firmly in the sand.

You know what forces people to communicate and engage less? Platforms that make them feel unsafe. Randos being able to turn up in the comments to go “Well, actually!” without the poster having any ability to keep them out. And sure, antis are part of that, but we’ve always had haters of other sorts and always had to get rid of them in order to have a civil discussion.

Denying dickheads access to your time does not kill communication.

If someone on twitter actually meant what you’ve written about above, then they’re clueless. If they want oldschool fandom culture, they need look no further than their own pen. Post long-ass “thinky thoughts” (and use cringe-inducing terms like “thinky thoughts”) and oldschool culture will come to you… And maybe, while you’re at it, figure out if oldschool means LJ culture, forum culture, FFN culture, mailing list culture, Usenet culture, fanfic convention culture, AMV editor culture, 80s multifandom zine culture, 70s Star Trek zine culture…

do folks genuinely not understand the appeal of the "enemies to lovers" trope, as it shows up over and over in fantasy & adventure fiction? really?

obviously it's cool if you don't personally like the trope. we're all different. but i'm seeing an increase in posts asking "what is wrong with people who ship this dynamic??" like it's so far out and strange, we can't possibly conceive of why people would like this. like... really?? enemies to lovers??? literally one of the oldest tropes in existence?? in the poppin-fresh year of our lord 2020, fandom is genuinely confused about this?

(disclaimer: i am, very specifically, talking about enemies to lovers, as it presents in fantasy and adventure fiction. when people use the word "abuse" to describe the dynamic between characters from opposing armies who like... fight each other on horseback with magical swords, i question their grasp of narrative, not to mention their motives.)

like, picture it: someone who opposed you, coming to your side. someone who clashed against you, becoming someone who never would again. someone who is in the end overcome by your power, your character, your strength, your wit, whatever: overcome by the very force of you. someone who chooses to fall at your feet and take up your cause as their own, to wield their own significant power against your enemies.

and... someone you don't have to always be so fucking good for. someone who has heard you scream unprintable curses on the battlefield. someone who has undoubtedly seen rage and fear and desperation in your eyes. someone you've probably also hurt. someone who wouldn't blink if you put an arrow in a real enemy's back and might in fact hide the body for you. someone you know will be as strong at your back in a fight as you'll be at theirs; partly because, well, you've both lived through each other.

and as a woman, boy do i personally get the appeal of this trope (as a general concept, even when specific ships don't resonate w/ me). like we live in a world where men think it's "weird" that their girlfriend swears or farts; not shaving is a cardinal sin. women's humanity is disgusting to so many men and even to so many fellow women. women's righteous anger is laughed at, our legitimate fears are routinely dismissed and belittled. if we're not nice, if we're not sweet, if we're not doormats, we're discarded; if we are any of those things, we're looked down on, we're targeted, we're blamed.

and people can't understand at all why we might be drawn to stories where the very forces that oppose us, are so transformed by us, so drawn to us for everything that we are, that they literally leave their old selves behind in the dust to join us and devote themselves entirely to our victory?

inconceivable, i guess.

(second disclaimer: no, this trope is obviously not appealing to all women, what the fuck is appealing to all women, besides pizza?)

and furthermore, since nobody asked me.... the idea that we have to "protect" women from enemies-to-lovers stories, when those exact stories can offer some of us a cathartic brand of fantasy.... whew, fandom. stay infantalizing us i guess.

when your art program’s closing message hits you straight in the heart and makes you stop and contemplate the state of it all

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