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.
