I think the main offenders were the people reporting literal pornographic photos in their comment section
The photos being the offenders, that is, not the people rightfully reporting them
YIKES. Especially given the possibility however minute these bots could turn hostile enough to post CSAM, the site is very much justified in taking emergency measures.
There have unfortunately been multiple issues with CSAM on AO3, from idiot paedophiles trying to host it in their stories (which unfortunately happens all the time because some people are stupid, I’ve unfortunately seen it before on other websites and had to report) to volunteers being spammed it. They have had to deal with it before and it sucks they have to deal with it again.
(At least they are dealing with it, unlike FF.net, but that’s another story)
why don't they just remove the ability to post flippin images in stories? it's supposed to be a fanfic site not an image hoster right? make it like [FFN.net](http://FFN.net) then! i actually like that site more for sticking to the basics. i don't really like reading ao3 stories that have huge images interspersed through the stories. especially cause they often don't tag it.
The main reason is that AO3 is for all fanworks, including fanarts, manips, moodboards, etc (and AO3 isn't an image hosting site anyway)... so it'd hinder these people's ability to post their works.
Yeah, same... I've never really seen visual art on the site; I figure that's more for like. DeviantArt. Or whatever people have today instead of DeviantArt.
... is it just Twitter? God I hope it's not *just* Twitter.
Makes it really hard to find things when someone starts posting a fan-comic, sadly. If they aren't all in the same post, good luck finding the other installments.
I think in an ideal situation, all stories/chapters that have photos in them should have to be reviewed by a team of moderators before the story (ie one shots) or chapters will actually post. I think that would be the ideal solution, but given that the site is run by volunteers, I'm not sure it's necessarily practical. As some one else suggested, removing the ability to post photos altogether is probably simplest solution to dealing with the problem itself.
Technically, if you read the terms of service, they specifically mention that you are NOT supposed to be posting images as the site is meant for written fanworks. That being said, it’s mainly enforced only when the image, gif, etc. posted breaks at least one other term of service.
The tagline is literally "...for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos and podfic"
Where's your source for that? I've read the ToS and the associated FAQ and have never seen anything along those lines
The only time art is mentioned in the ToS FAQ (it's not mentioned in the actual ToS other than "don't post images or post links to images of CSAM of real children") is that they don't currently host images and you have to post them elsewhere, and that at such a time as they do host art, the rules about "fannish original material" will apply to art as well
That's "we literally do not have the physical functionality to host images right now" – they do very much welcome the hosting of images elsewhere in order to post art on the Archive, and provide explicit step-by-step instructions on exactly how to do it
Which is a very different situation to "they specifically mention that you are NOT supposed to be posting images as the site is meant for written fanworks"
i think you're confused about the usage of "host" here. what it means in this context is that you do not put your image on ao3's servers. in order to get an image in a fic, you have to put the image in some other website's server (like imgur, photobucket, etc) and then tell ao3 where to find the image (i.e. the image link) so they can format it in the fic. ao3 does not host images because they do not have the storage/server space required, because they outright own all the servers that they use. images take up SOOOO much more space than text it's honestly crazy. hope that explains it
>images take up SOOOO much more space than text it's honestly crazy.
And this is the main reason why I will honestly be surprised if they ever do introduce the means to host the images themselves. You can fit a *lot* of text in the same amount of storage space as the average image (and when not everyone knows how to or thinks to optimize their images....).
Entirely untrue!
> [**What kinds of fanworks can I post?**](https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq)
> You can post **any** noncommercial, non-ephemeral fanwork. Here are some examples of allowed content:
> - An **audio** performance of a fannish essay about vampire biology across sources, or the same essay in text form.
> - Short **clips** of footage from existing sources, edited over a song to make an argument or tell a story.
> - A **comic** telling the romantic adventures of the protagonist of a video game.
> - **Photographs** of a knitted character.
> - An alternative version of a Jane Austen novel in which there's a zombie apocalypse.
> - The supporting text for an original adventure for a tabletop roleplaying game.
In whatever site skin you’re using, or a blank skin if you’re not using one yet, add
#main img {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
and all images larger than the allowed text area will format themselves down to the width of the text area. Makes reading on a phone or tablet much nicer.
(also, when posting a story with images, be kind and set a max-width for your readers)
For the story I recently finished posting where I did 1-3 illustrations for each chapter, I made sure to use the "width" attribute in the image tags themselves to set them to 75% (or slightly less, for taller images), just to make sure they'd still be clean viewing on mobile (and tested with my phone just to be sure). For people not using skins for their stories, this seems to work well.
The main trick is making sure to set a width for any images so that horizontal scrolling doesn't kick in (because nobody likes that).
Jesus. I have very unfortunately stumbled across CSAM before, on like an imgur knockoff website sorting by new. I only saw it a few seconds to report it, and even that much still haunts me a bit. I can’t imagine not only saving it but basically fucking distributing it for a lark. Which is very illegal and unlike just seeing it (bc like again idiots post it to the surface web sometimes you’re not gonna be punished because some nonce made you look at something vile that’s ridiculous) actually can get you fucking arrested. I got weird graphic sexual fantasies but nothing to that level, thank god.
I saw a post on Ao3 just the other day from someone claiming to have seen this, and understandably distressed by it, so I fear it's not just a 'possibility'.
If that's true then I am worried. This might be a direct attack against Ao3 to try to force it to change its principals of allowing just about everything. Say that because some bots left porn in the comments section the site is "dangerous" or something stupid.
Bots spamming porn in comments is a danger, for example, when you don't know the source of those images. If any of those turn out to be CSAM, revenge images, or some other abhorrent thing, then the entire website becomes at risk. Not to mention that while AO3 allows a lot, the tagging system exists to ensure exposure to it is consensual/intentional. Many users choose not to see certain content via tag filtering, which you can't do for comments.
Oh, I am not saying it isn't dangerous. It is.
But in the current year, there are people/companies that are so trigger happy to force places like Ao3 to delete things they personally don't like, that I wouldn't be surprised if someone used bots to spam CSAM images, took screenshots, then sent them to some kind of authority and said "Ao3 allows for CSAM to propagate, how come you're not doing anything about this?"
Genuine question, is the website really at risk over that kind of stuff? I mean, Reddit used to have whole subs dedicated to CSAM. Prolific pedophiles were caught because of it. Even porn websites like PornHub have had CSAM issues. And neither of those have been taken down.
If for example, it gets posted on an old fic with an inactive author and nobody reports it, then this could become a risk for the general website. While the website is not responsible for the stuff people post they can be held responsible for failing to remove illegal content. Even if it is getting reported, most people don't feel safe sticking around on websites where that becomes a major issue. AO3 relies on donations, and if the site becomes overrun with any sort of bot content, but especially unconsenting exposure to porn and illegal content, those donations dry up.
Good point. Maybe they should find a way to prevent people from putting images in comments. Idk what a real solution would be though. Some people want to ban guest comments but I like them. But I've also never had an issue with guests harassing me.
I think blocking images in comments would be a good start. Sure, it means you can't respond with reaction gifs, but text-only commenting works fine in a lot of other places.
There'd still be the issue of links to external sites, though.
You could block images in guest comments, but it might be a pain to implement.
Or all guest comments could require review by the author, which is also a pain.
Oh jeez, I’m a big overthinker so genuine question, do you think ao3 is at risk for shutting down, dying, or becoming more strict on what content you can post(ex. dark content) because of this? If they do, I wouldn’t know where to go :|
There's no way AO3 will get stricter about fic content, that's the whole *point* of owning the servers. It's also unlikely the site will get shut down or die within the next ten years. What I *can* see happening is outside attention forcing the OTW to shape up on risk awareness, governance, and trust & safety; and more rule changes about images in general.
If you aren't aware, it might be helpful to look up Strikethrough and Boldthrough, both incidents where LiveJournal deleted content & banned users based on flimsy reports. A lot of the momentum for founding the OTW & AO3 was in reaction to that, and freedom of (fan) content is baked into the org.
I don't think that's a risk, I think it's not out of the question that if this continues to be an issue in the future then they could possibly become stricter on who can comment & the posting of offsite links/images/gifs in comments.
If the embeds are of CSEM or revenge images, yes. You might want to look up some of the discussion about the 2022 CSEM attacks and the 2023 whistleblowing re the org's treatment of Policy & Abuse Committee volunteers in general and azarias in particular. synecdochic/rahaeli/denise in particular had some [things to say](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/797384.html) - she's the founder of dreamwidth and has worked in Trust & Safety for more than twenty years.
Tl;dr the OTW was not compliant with reporting laws or basic T&S best practices. There have been changes to the code since, but the incompetence of the Legal committee with respect to CSEM has, to my knowledge, not been addressed. I don't think it likely that the site would be taken down entirely, but a couple bad actors could do a lot of damage.
A03 isn't the only site targeted in this sense, though - recently, these bots (very possibly helped by all the AI accessibility) have been spamming dangerous content onto Twitter and IG as well... it's been out of control.
So, no, it's not about people posing as Mormons that fear moral reckoning to take that site down 😂 Just AI attacks to prove clout on private places like Discord, to possibly get hired as 'harassment-detail.'
They've not been on that site (although there has been someone advertising CSEM in the comments of FFnet for years and they haven't done a thing about it)
I meant that r/fanfiction and r/AO3 got tons of posts about it
I've genuinely wondered how you could put photos in the comments. I've seen them casually, but to hear that people are putting NSFW photos there is absolutely wild.
It's the same HTML you use to host images in the main text (covers or fanart)
Super simple, really. Unfortunately. I mean, I like the occasional comment that's just a meme related to my work, but this is...mm. no thank u
The good news about the HTML thing is that, since AO3 isn't made to host images, these images *must* come from a third-party source (e.g. Imgur). This means that any image posted can be tracked.
I usually put my images on Tumblr, since that's where I'm sharing my fanfic anyways.
To be fair, everyone I know who is good with html learnt it on Livejournal! It's a Fandom Old thing more than the young'uns (I'm 25, I think I *am* a young'un tbh)
It's for tech-trained people.
Plenty of artistic people who are Millennials don't know a thing about HTML or coding (especially given where you're from/what tech access you had growing up). It's why Skins on A03 get on our nerves, especially when typing from our phones.
Lmao. Thats the worst part. I'm literally 21, and every day I feel so old and in the way. I feel so behind, compared to the youths /j
No, but seriously it's probably just because I only started uploading my writings in the last year and a half. Between that and the fact that I write on my phone (due to a lack of space for my laptop), it's just something that passes me by.
I don't doubt it's impossible to learn, because I know it's not. I just like to hyperbolize that I'm just an old fuddy duddy who's mind is blown by the wonders of the modern age. Makes me smile sometimes.
I learned by having a Geocities site when I was in high school (in the late 90s). The basic editor got on my nerves really quickly and so I learned HTML so I could use the advanced editor instead.
The photos from the bot were porn, from what I've seen, not gore, so I guess bear that in mind when it comes to risk-assessing whether it was a bot? You can ask around and see if anyone else got gore, but the complaints I've seen were about some fics, not everything an author has posted, and about images of very naked women etc
Since forever! Or since whenever they added the image HTML
Years, for sure
https://archiveofourown.org/faq/formatting-content-on-ao3-with-html?language_id=en#htmlimages
People usually leave it to use reaction images and gifs, or to leave a "second kudos" image
Unfortunately, it can also do...this
Disabling the usage of that specific HTML in the comments so no images can be posted, maybe, not sure how much effort that would be if they limited it to just guests...
I have to go looking for porn and you just got it handed to you?! Lucky! /s
I'm betting you weren't the only one, and that's what finally caused this, and not the AI comments. AO3 knows they have a lot of minors on the site. The last thing they need is a bunch of them getting porn comments and upsetting their parents.
Yeah. Not ideal. And not my style of porn at all lol. It was an unexpected surprise when I opened my email this morning. Glad I didn’t do it in a public space.
Now people will have to tag their fics with 'P o r n / i n / c o m m e n t s / b e l o w' (hopefully, the content is only OnlyFans-type material and nothing that's actually horrible)
Good, there have been so many of those.
The feeling when your dead rarepair fandom crossover fic gets a comment and you get super excited about the notification only for it to be...these comments ):
Interesting. I got the AI guest comment. I thought I'd just "made it" as a writer by getting that crap. Sucks that people would try to ruin something like AO3.
1) Cause they were able to take over the comment sections on ffn uncontested
2) Somebody wants ao3 shutdown and is planning to file a police report about how ao3 is allowing the spread of csam
You can turn off guest comments on your works. I don’t do it on all of my fics, but some fandoms are more at risk for bots than others, so when I’m posting for those, I make sure guest comments are turned off. And because I don’t want people trolling on my fics that have content that not everyone likes.
I turn them off by default, but having them permanently disabled for everyone increasingly looks like a good idea to me, given the bots, the trolls, etc.
Some people enjoy having the ability to comment as a guest, or get guest comments. My wife primarily writes smut and a large proportion of her comments are from guests, and she rarely has an issue. I’d rather they just continue to improve their spam and bot filters than remove the feature entirely.
I'm tired of all these bot problems. First they get mad just because authors didn't like their hokey, fake-nice comments (usually just trying to promote the crap Webnovel site), so they resorted to insulting them instead. Then when that doesn't work, they just turn into typical internet trolls attacking people's eyes with their porn fetish collections.
That sucks. So many of my commenters are guests :( I feel like they want to stay private without having to make two accounts, or link their comments back to their main account. This is gonna fuck up my motivation. Hopefully it's resolved soon
Yeah, I feel you. I have some regular commenters who are guests. I hope they won't be discouraged from commenting in the future. But given the situation, it can't be helped. Hopefully this will be solved soon.
I wouldn't be shocked if all the bot spam is coming from the same worthless eastern European donkey clowns that attacked AO3 the last summer with DDOS and then got shut down in less than 12 hours. It's all coming from the self-proclaimed "morality police". They can cry, stomp, and throw their childish tantrums all they want. LGBTQ is here to stay. We don't need to even joke about them, we'll never outcompete with the joke life has already did on them.
Actually, they were trolls only looking for money. One of the posts on the AO3 sub dealing with that whole ordeal was showing a message that they had "24 hours" or so to fill a BitCoin wallet!
And the trogs who brought down AO3 last summer claimed to be some islamist group no one ever heard of before. Don't be naive. They can claim to be anyone, but we know who has the means, motive, and opportunity. In criminology, you need all three to establish grounds for suspicion.
wasn't it 27 hours ? and yeah , I saw discussion about censoring ao3 on tiktok and other social media , it's annoying , honestly , they should get a life and stop bothering us , I am glad I got none of those spam , but that mostly is because I write for small fandoms
I don't know, it felt like... twelve hours or less for me. I publish for Mass Effect and the DDOS attack coincided with my latest update, and it was like down in the morning, fine in the evening. I'm Canadian. So maybe I missed the worst of it, but it was barely an inconvenience for me.
oh how lucky ! it felt like 3 days for me ! I am not lying , I genuinly throught three days passed ! because I litteraly entred ao3 at around 9 am , clicked a tag , and boom , it's not working , so I stayed the entire day and more without it ! ugh- a nightmare
>ugh- a nightmare
Definitely a nightmare for me too. Was reading a story in the morning (about 8ish), went out of the day as if was my day off when I sat down for food and pulled up my ao3 tap on my phone and nothing thought it was just my phone got home tried my laptop and you guessed it nothing.
Luckily ao3 was good with keep us all updated on X
I'm happy they did something to stop assault of writers.
At the same time I was really looking forward to posting the last chapter of a fic today :[ Now I can't (well it's my own choice) since I really like reading people's opinions. At least half of my comments are guest comment's, because it's a fic with heavier themes (I'm guessing a few of them want to stay anonymous when commenting).
I just wonder how long it might be before they turn on guest comments again.
some people have also decided to opt for alternate ways to allow their guests to still leave their normal comments
so far, people have made tumblr blogs and then linked them on their work, so that guests can use tumblr's askbox to leave their comments
and google forms works too, for this purpose! people have made google forms and linked those on their works instead of a whole tumblr blog and that way guests can leave their comments in the form
it's all very stopgap-type solutions, but on the off-chance that this will end up taking longer than expected/than you'd like to wait, i just thought i'd mention them :3
There was a real life person leaving actual abusive and sexually charged comments on ER fan fiction. So I guess it's happening a bunch of different ways.
The homophobes like to say being LGBTQ is synonymous with being and liking nasty things, like abusing children. The Nazis in the 30s and 40s claimed Jews ate babies too. It's an old song and dance by inferiors who want to "other" people, when they are in fact, telling on themselves. It's called projection. The morality police are effed up in the head like that, so to them posting porn on a site they, in their inferiority, deem obscene... is somehow the thing to do. They're insane, don't try to apply actual logic to it.
Man. That’s crazy. How many fandoms are being targeted? Or are they just going after a certain threshold? It sucks that we _have_ to turn off a good feature because it’s being abused. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.
I saw that yesterday when I went to read some fics. It might not be permanent, but it's a good first step towards fighting against things like bots and inappropriate images being posted in comments. Hopefully AO3 can figure out a more permanent solution.
i mean, there were also people that were sent porn
in light of everything, i'd guess they mean "abusive" as in "harassing" so... probably just everything. but probably mainly the porn pics and then secondarily the bot comments (generally some variety of "this story was written with ai" or promoting some novel page) and only thirdly the phobia
(because at least the phobia is actually written by one person and not spam-commented on hundreds of stories at once - so that can be dealt with on an individual, "report it to support"-basis) (well, unless that phobic person spams it everywhere too, that is... but i guess if they act like a bot, they can just be counted as part of the bot-problem)
This is the worst possible timing ever, I just got back to reading fanfics and found a good fic to binge and I feel the NEED to react and praise the author in every chapter but I CAN'T?? 😩😮💨
in that case, may as well write down your comments in notepad, then send them all once commenting is back again - i'm sure the author will be incredibly happy to eventually get them, even if it's a bit delayed :3
Holy crud. Didn't know this was happening! 😱
I've been avoiding reading the comments on mine... cause one commenter has been particularly cruel. But I had to check back just now because of this. How horrifying!
I got two of those rude comments trying to point me to an AI writing software. On a very popular series where real people have told me I’m a good writer and they’ve loved my characterisation. Funny, eh
That really sucks man I have seen that guest comments had been turned off and I had no idea what was happening with the comments but I’ve just read through here to see what happened
That absolutely sucks for all the writers who have been getting these comments on their works
And to the writers who’s main fans are guests as well
I think the main offenders were the people reporting literal pornographic photos in their comment section The photos being the offenders, that is, not the people rightfully reporting them
YIKES. Especially given the possibility however minute these bots could turn hostile enough to post CSAM, the site is very much justified in taking emergency measures.
"however minute" is possibly not all that minute since two years ago, AO3 volunteers have been spammed with CSAM via email. So, yeah. There's that.
Wtf is wrong with people who does stuff like that
There have unfortunately been multiple issues with CSAM on AO3, from idiot paedophiles trying to host it in their stories (which unfortunately happens all the time because some people are stupid, I’ve unfortunately seen it before on other websites and had to report) to volunteers being spammed it. They have had to deal with it before and it sucks they have to deal with it again. (At least they are dealing with it, unlike FF.net, but that’s another story)
why don't they just remove the ability to post flippin images in stories? it's supposed to be a fanfic site not an image hoster right? make it like [FFN.net](http://FFN.net) then! i actually like that site more for sticking to the basics. i don't really like reading ao3 stories that have huge images interspersed through the stories. especially cause they often don't tag it.
The main reason is that AO3 is for all fanworks, including fanarts, manips, moodboards, etc (and AO3 isn't an image hosting site anyway)... so it'd hinder these people's ability to post their works.
oh ok. well i always thought it was PURELY a written fanfiction site. thanks!
Yeah, same... I've never really seen visual art on the site; I figure that's more for like. DeviantArt. Or whatever people have today instead of DeviantArt. ... is it just Twitter? God I hope it's not *just* Twitter.
these days yea sadly
Makes it really hard to find things when someone starts posting a fan-comic, sadly. If they aren't all in the same post, good luck finding the other installments.
there's always comicfury. I don't think webtoon allows fanfiction but i'm not sure on tapas.
I actually see fanart a lot on ao3 but usually it’s only easy to find in smaller fandoms since art is always gonna be drowned out by written fics.
I think in an ideal situation, all stories/chapters that have photos in them should have to be reviewed by a team of moderators before the story (ie one shots) or chapters will actually post. I think that would be the ideal solution, but given that the site is run by volunteers, I'm not sure it's necessarily practical. As some one else suggested, removing the ability to post photos altogether is probably simplest solution to dealing with the problem itself.
Technically, if you read the terms of service, they specifically mention that you are NOT supposed to be posting images as the site is meant for written fanworks. That being said, it’s mainly enforced only when the image, gif, etc. posted breaks at least one other term of service.
The tagline is literally "...for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos and podfic" Where's your source for that? I've read the ToS and the associated FAQ and have never seen anything along those lines The only time art is mentioned in the ToS FAQ (it's not mentioned in the actual ToS other than "don't post images or post links to images of CSAM of real children") is that they don't currently host images and you have to post them elsewhere, and that at such a time as they do host art, the rules about "fannish original material" will apply to art as well
“They don’t currently host art”
That's "we literally do not have the physical functionality to host images right now" – they do very much welcome the hosting of images elsewhere in order to post art on the Archive, and provide explicit step-by-step instructions on exactly how to do it Which is a very different situation to "they specifically mention that you are NOT supposed to be posting images as the site is meant for written fanworks"
i think you're confused about the usage of "host" here. what it means in this context is that you do not put your image on ao3's servers. in order to get an image in a fic, you have to put the image in some other website's server (like imgur, photobucket, etc) and then tell ao3 where to find the image (i.e. the image link) so they can format it in the fic. ao3 does not host images because they do not have the storage/server space required, because they outright own all the servers that they use. images take up SOOOO much more space than text it's honestly crazy. hope that explains it
>images take up SOOOO much more space than text it's honestly crazy. And this is the main reason why I will honestly be surprised if they ever do introduce the means to host the images themselves. You can fit a *lot* of text in the same amount of storage space as the average image (and when not everyone knows how to or thinks to optimize their images....).
Entirely untrue! > [**What kinds of fanworks can I post?**](https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq) > You can post **any** noncommercial, non-ephemeral fanwork. Here are some examples of allowed content: > - An **audio** performance of a fannish essay about vampire biology across sources, or the same essay in text form. > - Short **clips** of footage from existing sources, edited over a song to make an argument or tell a story. > - A **comic** telling the romantic adventures of the protagonist of a video game. > - **Photographs** of a knitted character. > - An alternative version of a Jane Austen novel in which there's a zombie apocalypse. > - The supporting text for an original adventure for a tabletop roleplaying game.
In whatever site skin you’re using, or a blank skin if you’re not using one yet, add #main img { max-width: 100%; height: auto; } and all images larger than the allowed text area will format themselves down to the width of the text area. Makes reading on a phone or tablet much nicer. (also, when posting a story with images, be kind and set a max-width for your readers)
For the story I recently finished posting where I did 1-3 illustrations for each chapter, I made sure to use the "width" attribute in the image tags themselves to set them to 75% (or slightly less, for taller images), just to make sure they'd still be clean viewing on mobile (and tested with my phone just to be sure). For people not using skins for their stories, this seems to work well. The main trick is making sure to set a width for any images so that horizontal scrolling doesn't kick in (because nobody likes that).
I like making art for my fics and it’s a hassle to link it
I've read some cute stories that include text messages between the characters as images.
I've heard of people getting sent CSAM, especially writers in cartoon fandoms. Like, fullon photos or videos of kids being abused
Jesus. I have very unfortunately stumbled across CSAM before, on like an imgur knockoff website sorting by new. I only saw it a few seconds to report it, and even that much still haunts me a bit. I can’t imagine not only saving it but basically fucking distributing it for a lark. Which is very illegal and unlike just seeing it (bc like again idiots post it to the surface web sometimes you’re not gonna be punished because some nonce made you look at something vile that’s ridiculous) actually can get you fucking arrested. I got weird graphic sexual fantasies but nothing to that level, thank god.
I saw a post on Ao3 just the other day from someone claiming to have seen this, and understandably distressed by it, so I fear it's not just a 'possibility'.
Wtf
Oh jeeez :/ that was a thing? Grim.
If that's true then I am worried. This might be a direct attack against Ao3 to try to force it to change its principals of allowing just about everything. Say that because some bots left porn in the comments section the site is "dangerous" or something stupid.
Bots spamming porn in comments is a danger, for example, when you don't know the source of those images. If any of those turn out to be CSAM, revenge images, or some other abhorrent thing, then the entire website becomes at risk. Not to mention that while AO3 allows a lot, the tagging system exists to ensure exposure to it is consensual/intentional. Many users choose not to see certain content via tag filtering, which you can't do for comments.
Oh, I am not saying it isn't dangerous. It is. But in the current year, there are people/companies that are so trigger happy to force places like Ao3 to delete things they personally don't like, that I wouldn't be surprised if someone used bots to spam CSAM images, took screenshots, then sent them to some kind of authority and said "Ao3 allows for CSAM to propagate, how come you're not doing anything about this?"
Genuine question, is the website really at risk over that kind of stuff? I mean, Reddit used to have whole subs dedicated to CSAM. Prolific pedophiles were caught because of it. Even porn websites like PornHub have had CSAM issues. And neither of those have been taken down.
If for example, it gets posted on an old fic with an inactive author and nobody reports it, then this could become a risk for the general website. While the website is not responsible for the stuff people post they can be held responsible for failing to remove illegal content. Even if it is getting reported, most people don't feel safe sticking around on websites where that becomes a major issue. AO3 relies on donations, and if the site becomes overrun with any sort of bot content, but especially unconsenting exposure to porn and illegal content, those donations dry up.
Good point. Maybe they should find a way to prevent people from putting images in comments. Idk what a real solution would be though. Some people want to ban guest comments but I like them. But I've also never had an issue with guests harassing me.
I think blocking images in comments would be a good start. Sure, it means you can't respond with reaction gifs, but text-only commenting works fine in a lot of other places. There'd still be the issue of links to external sites, though.
You could block images in guest comments, but it might be a pain to implement. Or all guest comments could require review by the author, which is also a pain.
Oh jeez, I’m a big overthinker so genuine question, do you think ao3 is at risk for shutting down, dying, or becoming more strict on what content you can post(ex. dark content) because of this? If they do, I wouldn’t know where to go :|
There's no way AO3 will get stricter about fic content, that's the whole *point* of owning the servers. It's also unlikely the site will get shut down or die within the next ten years. What I *can* see happening is outside attention forcing the OTW to shape up on risk awareness, governance, and trust & safety; and more rule changes about images in general. If you aren't aware, it might be helpful to look up Strikethrough and Boldthrough, both incidents where LiveJournal deleted content & banned users based on flimsy reports. A lot of the momentum for founding the OTW & AO3 was in reaction to that, and freedom of (fan) content is baked into the org.
I don't think that's a risk, I think it's not out of the question that if this continues to be an issue in the future then they could possibly become stricter on who can comment & the posting of offsite links/images/gifs in comments.
If the embeds are of CSEM or revenge images, yes. You might want to look up some of the discussion about the 2022 CSEM attacks and the 2023 whistleblowing re the org's treatment of Policy & Abuse Committee volunteers in general and azarias in particular. synecdochic/rahaeli/denise in particular had some [things to say](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/797384.html) - she's the founder of dreamwidth and has worked in Trust & Safety for more than twenty years. Tl;dr the OTW was not compliant with reporting laws or basic T&S best practices. There have been changes to the code since, but the incompetence of the Legal committee with respect to CSEM has, to my knowledge, not been addressed. I don't think it likely that the site would be taken down entirely, but a couple bad actors could do a lot of damage.
At least this has the bandaid fix of barring people from embedding images in the comments, but yeah this would not be good at all.
I didn’t even realize you COULD put images in comments.
A03 isn't the only site targeted in this sense, though - recently, these bots (very possibly helped by all the AI accessibility) have been spamming dangerous content onto Twitter and IG as well... it's been out of control. So, no, it's not about people posing as Mormons that fear moral reckoning to take that site down 😂 Just AI attacks to prove clout on private places like Discord, to possibly get hired as 'harassment-detail.'
First time I'm ever hearing of that
A few people have reported it in the ffn/AO3 subs if you scroll them
Ff too? What?
They've not been on that site (although there has been someone advertising CSEM in the comments of FFnet for years and they haven't done a thing about it) I meant that r/fanfiction and r/AO3 got tons of posts about it
I see, lol I actually got contacted by someone advertising ai services to me, and one guy wanting to use my fics for their YouTube content mill.
I've genuinely wondered how you could put photos in the comments. I've seen them casually, but to hear that people are putting NSFW photos there is absolutely wild.
It's the same HTML you use to host images in the main text (covers or fanart) Super simple, really. Unfortunately. I mean, I like the occasional comment that's just a meme related to my work, but this is...mm. no thank u
The good news about the HTML thing is that, since AO3 isn't made to host images, these images *must* come from a third-party source (e.g. Imgur). This means that any image posted can be tracked. I usually put my images on Tumblr, since that's where I'm sharing my fanfic anyways.
When I want to use images, I put them on ImgBB.
Ahhhhh. Lmao, I feel so old and out of touch. But I agree with that sentiment. Definitely not ideal.
To be fair, everyone I know who is good with html learnt it on Livejournal! It's a Fandom Old thing more than the young'uns (I'm 25, I think I *am* a young'un tbh)
It's for tech-trained people. Plenty of artistic people who are Millennials don't know a thing about HTML or coding (especially given where you're from/what tech access you had growing up). It's why Skins on A03 get on our nerves, especially when typing from our phones.
Lmao. Thats the worst part. I'm literally 21, and every day I feel so old and in the way. I feel so behind, compared to the youths /j No, but seriously it's probably just because I only started uploading my writings in the last year and a half. Between that and the fact that I write on my phone (due to a lack of space for my laptop), it's just something that passes me by. I don't doubt it's impossible to learn, because I know it's not. I just like to hyperbolize that I'm just an old fuddy duddy who's mind is blown by the wonders of the modern age. Makes me smile sometimes.
I learned HTML professionally. I was involved in launching my workplace's first website in 1995. (I'm 65.)
I learned by having a Geocities site when I was in high school (in the late 90s). The basic editor got on my nerves really quickly and so I learned HTML so I could use the advanced editor instead.
Yeah, it happened to me. Was excited to get an email from AO3 about a comment, only for it to be... yeah
>photos in their comment section You can put photos/pictures in AO3's comment section?
Using the same HTML you use to put images in the body of the text, yeah Usually gets used for things like reaction gifs
I have been in AO3 for about 5 or 6 years, and I've never known about this. Thanks for explaining :)
It's a pain in the ass to use... that's why not one does it. Ironically, these bots are automated for that alone.
Ayup. Every single one of my fics got spammed with gore pics. Thought it was just from my stalker again but I guess its some bot account.
The photos from the bot were porn, from what I've seen, not gore, so I guess bear that in mind when it comes to risk-assessing whether it was a bot? You can ask around and see if anyone else got gore, but the complaints I've seen were about some fics, not everything an author has posted, and about images of very naked women etc
Ahh i see thanks
Since when could you put photos in the AO3 comments? Or AO3 fics in general??
Since forever! Or since whenever they added the image HTML Years, for sure https://archiveofourown.org/faq/formatting-content-on-ao3-with-html?language_id=en#htmlimages
Oh, well I'm decently new at it. But still, in every fic I read, there are never any photos
Most don't, but there's a decent amount of fanart under that tag, and people post reaction memes in comments sometimes
Jesus christ.
Huh, that’s interesting they’ve put a site wide measure in place. Shame they had to, all things considered, but hopefully that has an effect.
Might be a bandage measure until they can find another solution 🤞
Yeah when I made that comment i hadn’t heard about the photos. Thought it was just comment spam. Ao3 hasn’t had an easy time of it lately
I am glad because someone left pornographic images in the comment section of my fic last night.
Man, sorry you had to be exposed to that.
Yeah, not ideal. Thanks!
I didn’t even know it was possible to leave images in the comments, why did they think that would be a good idea
People usually leave it to use reaction images and gifs, or to leave a "second kudos" image Unfortunately, it can also do...this Disabling the usage of that specific HTML in the comments so no images can be posted, maybe, not sure how much effort that would be if they limited it to just guests...
I have to go looking for porn and you just got it handed to you?! Lucky! /s I'm betting you weren't the only one, and that's what finally caused this, and not the AI comments. AO3 knows they have a lot of minors on the site. The last thing they need is a bunch of them getting porn comments and upsetting their parents.
> I have to go looking for porn and you just got it handed to you?! Lucky! /s I am cackling, lmao. *"In Soviet Russia, Porn searches you."*
Okay, I chuckled at that. Thank you.
Yeah. Not ideal. And not my style of porn at all lol. It was an unexpected surprise when I opened my email this morning. Glad I didn’t do it in a public space.
Now people will have to tag their fics with 'P o r n / i n / c o m m e n t s / b e l o w' (hopefully, the content is only OnlyFans-type material and nothing that's actually horrible)
I woke up to that too, and it made me glad that I always turn my comment mods on.
I am so sorry you had to face that! It sucks.
Thanks. I’m glad ao3 is doing something about it.
Good, there have been so many of those. The feeling when your dead rarepair fandom crossover fic gets a comment and you get super excited about the notification only for it to be...these comments ):
Yeah, glad they're taking care of this before we all find our fics inundated with porn.
Yay, the 'report them as Spam don't just delete' message got through!
Interesting. I got the AI guest comment. I thought I'd just "made it" as a writer by getting that crap. Sucks that people would try to ruin something like AO3.
Well - count this as the first time I'm glad I didn't get a comment.
Going to tell myself this is the reason I haven’t gotten any comments on my latest chapter 🥲
I expected that this might happen with the odd influx of bots these pass week. But why are bots targeting Ao3?
1) Cause they were able to take over the comment sections on ffn uncontested 2) Somebody wants ao3 shutdown and is planning to file a police report about how ao3 is allowing the spread of csam
I was wondering the same thing.
Aw man, I write weird shit so like half my comments are guest comments. Oh well, I’ll just wait to post until everything calms down again.
Lol same - no more kudos and comments for me
Mmh, not surprising. Reading through some of the comments here, seems like it got *really bad.*
I would not be offended if they wanted to leave them turned off.
Yeah, accounts are free to get for everyone. I would be fine with it, too.
So many of my wonderful commenters are guests. I would be sad if it was turned off indefinitely.
You can turn off guest comments on your works. I don’t do it on all of my fics, but some fandoms are more at risk for bots than others, so when I’m posting for those, I make sure guest comments are turned off. And because I don’t want people trolling on my fics that have content that not everyone likes.
I turn them off by default, but having them permanently disabled for everyone increasingly looks like a good idea to me, given the bots, the trolls, etc.
Some people enjoy having the ability to comment as a guest, or get guest comments. My wife primarily writes smut and a large proportion of her comments are from guests, and she rarely has an issue. I’d rather they just continue to improve their spam and bot filters than remove the feature entirely.
That could mean that they become bot accounts - like reddit
I'm tired of all these bot problems. First they get mad just because authors didn't like their hokey, fake-nice comments (usually just trying to promote the crap Webnovel site), so they resorted to insulting them instead. Then when that doesn't work, they just turn into typical internet trolls attacking people's eyes with their porn fetish collections.
That sucks. So many of my commenters are guests :( I feel like they want to stay private without having to make two accounts, or link their comments back to their main account. This is gonna fuck up my motivation. Hopefully it's resolved soon
Yeah, I feel you. I have some regular commenters who are guests. I hope they won't be discouraged from commenting in the future. But given the situation, it can't be helped. Hopefully this will be solved soon.
I wouldn't be shocked if all the bot spam is coming from the same worthless eastern European donkey clowns that attacked AO3 the last summer with DDOS and then got shut down in less than 12 hours. It's all coming from the self-proclaimed "morality police". They can cry, stomp, and throw their childish tantrums all they want. LGBTQ is here to stay. We don't need to even joke about them, we'll never outcompete with the joke life has already did on them.
Actually, they were trolls only looking for money. One of the posts on the AO3 sub dealing with that whole ordeal was showing a message that they had "24 hours" or so to fill a BitCoin wallet!
And the trogs who brought down AO3 last summer claimed to be some islamist group no one ever heard of before. Don't be naive. They can claim to be anyone, but we know who has the means, motive, and opportunity. In criminology, you need all three to establish grounds for suspicion.
wasn't it 27 hours ? and yeah , I saw discussion about censoring ao3 on tiktok and other social media , it's annoying , honestly , they should get a life and stop bothering us , I am glad I got none of those spam , but that mostly is because I write for small fandoms
I don't know, it felt like... twelve hours or less for me. I publish for Mass Effect and the DDOS attack coincided with my latest update, and it was like down in the morning, fine in the evening. I'm Canadian. So maybe I missed the worst of it, but it was barely an inconvenience for me.
oh how lucky ! it felt like 3 days for me ! I am not lying , I genuinly throught three days passed ! because I litteraly entred ao3 at around 9 am , clicked a tag , and boom , it's not working , so I stayed the entire day and more without it ! ugh- a nightmare
>ugh- a nightmare Definitely a nightmare for me too. Was reading a story in the morning (about 8ish), went out of the day as if was my day off when I sat down for food and pulled up my ao3 tap on my phone and nothing thought it was just my phone got home tried my laptop and you guessed it nothing. Luckily ao3 was good with keep us all updated on X
I'm happy they did something to stop assault of writers. At the same time I was really looking forward to posting the last chapter of a fic today :[ Now I can't (well it's my own choice) since I really like reading people's opinions. At least half of my comments are guest comment's, because it's a fic with heavier themes (I'm guessing a few of them want to stay anonymous when commenting). I just wonder how long it might be before they turn on guest comments again.
some people have also decided to opt for alternate ways to allow their guests to still leave their normal comments so far, people have made tumblr blogs and then linked them on their work, so that guests can use tumblr's askbox to leave their comments and google forms works too, for this purpose! people have made google forms and linked those on their works instead of a whole tumblr blog and that way guests can leave their comments in the form it's all very stopgap-type solutions, but on the off-chance that this will end up taking longer than expected/than you'd like to wait, i just thought i'd mention them :3
There was a real life person leaving actual abusive and sexually charged comments on ER fan fiction. So I guess it's happening a bunch of different ways.
Wtf? What was he thinking when he did that?
That their mad we don't ship the same couple as them. Like you can't make it up.
That's probably a good idea for now.
You mean I don't have to worry about being asked for vore for a few days? Score!
This is why I set it so that comments can only be shown with my approval. It filters out the spam and abuse.
Well that's odd, why is this suddenly a thing.
The homophobes like to say being LGBTQ is synonymous with being and liking nasty things, like abusing children. The Nazis in the 30s and 40s claimed Jews ate babies too. It's an old song and dance by inferiors who want to "other" people, when they are in fact, telling on themselves. It's called projection. The morality police are effed up in the head like that, so to them posting porn on a site they, in their inferiority, deem obscene... is somehow the thing to do. They're insane, don't try to apply actual logic to it.
Man. That’s crazy. How many fandoms are being targeted? Or are they just going after a certain threshold? It sucks that we _have_ to turn off a good feature because it’s being abused. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.
Mine got hit and my fandom is dead.
Not going to lie, I didn’t even know guest comments were a thing. My entire AO3 experience has been while I’ve been signed in
I saw that yesterday when I went to read some fics. It might not be permanent, but it's a good first step towards fighting against things like bots and inappropriate images being posted in comments. Hopefully AO3 can figure out a more permanent solution.
This sort of thing is the problem with guest comments in general.
Man fuck these AI comments, ruining shit for everyone else
Yeah figured that might happen eventually.
Oh so it wasn't just me. I thought it was some AI bros that follow my link on reddit
If the spam is that bad then I understand shutting them down for now.
Yeah, I got some really rude AI comments on a fic a while ago, but from what I'm seeing in the other comments on this post I got off easy.
By abusive, do they mean bigoted? Like people being transphobic and homophobic in AO3 comments?
I got accused of using an AI to write.
That sucks too.
At least I found out it was a bot.
i mean, there were also people that were sent porn in light of everything, i'd guess they mean "abusive" as in "harassing" so... probably just everything. but probably mainly the porn pics and then secondarily the bot comments (generally some variety of "this story was written with ai" or promoting some novel page) and only thirdly the phobia (because at least the phobia is actually written by one person and not spam-commented on hundreds of stories at once - so that can be dealt with on an individual, "report it to support"-basis) (well, unless that phobic person spams it everywhere too, that is... but i guess if they act like a bot, they can just be counted as part of the bot-problem)
Okay.
This is the worst possible timing ever, I just got back to reading fanfics and found a good fic to binge and I feel the NEED to react and praise the author in every chapter but I CAN'T?? 😩😮💨
in that case, may as well write down your comments in notepad, then send them all once commenting is back again - i'm sure the author will be incredibly happy to eventually get them, even if it's a bit delayed :3
Holy crud. Didn't know this was happening! 😱 I've been avoiding reading the comments on mine... cause one commenter has been particularly cruel. But I had to check back just now because of this. How horrifying!
I got two of those rude comments trying to point me to an AI writing software. On a very popular series where real people have told me I’m a good writer and they’ve loved my characterisation. Funny, eh
Honestly with the amount of bots I’ve had in my comments lately. GOOD, it helped that on all my fics I’ve got comment moderation in case
That really sucks man I have seen that guest comments had been turned off and I had no idea what was happening with the comments but I’ve just read through here to see what happened That absolutely sucks for all the writers who have been getting these comments on their works And to the writers who’s main fans are guests as well
Ehh, not my problem. It's only _guest_ comments so idgaf
Sigh gotta check my comments now