Tumblr accounts posing as "AO3 consultants" asking users to take down their works or else have their works deleted

A heads up from AO3 News: "We recently received reports about one or more Tumblr accounts posing as "AO3 consultants" and contacting other users about their works on the Archive. In those messages, users are asked to take down their works "due to reports of abuse" or else have their works deleted by AO3 admins.

These messages are in no way sanctioned by the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee, who will never contact users via social media. All messages you receive from our Support and Abuse teams will be signed by the volunteer contacting you, and will reference specific abuse reports, requests for technical support, or other matters pertaining to your account."

https://www.archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10413

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Friendly reminder from the AO3 TOS:

"Unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that content to be."

Edit: like the staff said, they will give you a shot to clean up your fic if it breaks policy.

God, that is such an awesome statement, massive points to AO3 for backbone. :)

Joke's on them

I don't have a tumblr.

Checkmate.

Why would people even do this? To troll? To take policing content into their own hands? To remove authors more popular than themselves?

Number 2 I'm guessing.

I was reading through the comments on the AO3 post and a lot of these people are doing this due to AO3's policy of permitting fics featuring underage sex. These people have been encouraging people to report AO3 to the FBI for 'promoting sexual abuse of minors' and 'child pornography'. Since they've now seen that AO3 won't bend to their demands as FFN did (and the FBI obviously doesn't care about their complaints), they decided to be sneaky. If they can't get AO3 to take down the fics and they themselves can't physically remove then, then tricking the authors into taking the fics down is their last resort. The thinking behind it is clever - if only the entire thing weren't so unbelievably stupid and a waste of time.

(and please don't respond to this comment by getting into a discussion over whether or not it's right for AO3 to allow fics with underage sex. We've had that discussion on this sub a number of times and it never goes anywhere good. I just wanted to provide clarification, since a lot of people think this is purely the work of trolls, and it's not)

Hah, apparently I'm into child porn now. (A very clear /S tag just in case)

Lemme guess - fandom anti's who are doing this to patrol "inappropriate shipping" because they have nothing better to do with their time than sip their low fat lattes and be jealous that they can't produce content at all?

cough Voltron cough

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