Ao3 is actually massively culturally important and very very good at being what it is. I’m so serious when I say that ao3 needs to be protected as the anti censorship, by fans for fans, nonprofit, volunteer run, expertly designed archival site that it is. You don’t have to read or like fanfiction to understand that on principle, ao3 is a site that should be defended.
AO3 is under a DDoS attack meaning that the servers are purposefully being overwhelmed by an attacker. Please do not refresh ao3 related links because each time you do, another request is sent to the servers meaning you are contributing to the DDoS! Wait for the official announcement from their twitter and then visit the site because the servers will keep crashing otherwise!
ao3 is facing a ddos attack from an overseas right-wing anonymous group because it contains “degeneracy and disgusting things like LGBT and NSFW”.
they’re not the only right-wing group that is attacking fanfiction sites because of queer & nsfw content. the Heritage foundation, the US right wing think tank that writes laws for republicans, wrote an article about how “big tech turns kids trans” in which they’re advocating for the Kid’s Online Safety Act to pass because it will give state attorney generals power to sue websites for “potentially harmful content towards minors”. in this article they point out websites like wattpad, tumblr, tiktok, twitter as sites that GOP attorney generals can and will target for censorship if this bill passes. all places where fandom, that’s mostly queer, hangs out.
if you think this bill has no chance of passing because of all the red flags it poses, think again. it currently has 38 cosponsors in the senate, and is being pushed by the democrats as a “protecting the children!!” type bill.
there are left-aligned orgs in congress rn lobbying for this bill to pass. july is extremely decisive, because if KOSA goes through to markup it’ll be bundled with the Earn It act, Restrict, and all the other bad internet bills and passed as a package, completely censoring the internet forever.
if you want to learn more about the bill, go here. also sign the open letter against it here
it’s ESSENTIAL that you call your members of congress, specifically Maria Cantwell (you can call from out of state) and tell them DO NOT PASS KOSA. this site here connects you to your members of congress and gives you a short simple script to read off of! super easy and doesn’t take much out of your day! please do this now!!
seeing everyone just mindlessly sign up for threads despite all the clear warning signs feels like I’m living in Sailor Moon or a magical girl anime episode where the Monster of the Day just set up shop over night and their product is literally draining your lifeforce for the Dark Kingdom but people keep going there
ALT
