When Archive of Our Own went offline after a “security incident,” readers looked for ways to keep finding the stories they loved. Some gathered downloaded works in shared libraries. For authors, that effort raised a different question: who gets to decide where a story appears once it has been posted online?
A shutdown turned access into a dispute
AO3’s team said the site could remain offline for up to four weeks. The archive hosts more than 18.8 million fan works across hundreds of thousands of fandoms, so its sudden absence affected both people looking for stories and writers who had made the site their home.
Readers began sharing saved fanfiction through Google Drives. Some writers objected to their work being uploaded to large collections without their consent. They worried about losing control over how stories were distributed, and about copies being used in ways they had not agreed to.
Avery, a writer who has posted fanfiction for about six years, found her stories on mirror sites after the outage. She contacted Squidgeworld and AO3.Life, and the works were removed. But she could not know whether every copy had been found. AO3.Life has since been taken down; Walter Hopgood, president of Squidge.org, which hosts Squidgeworld, told WIRED that it removes works posted without an author’s permission.
Sharing can feel different at scale
Not every form of sharing bothered Avery. She said she was comfortable with private drives and with readers asking her for a copy. Her concern was seeing her stories placed in giant libraries, where they could travel beyond the audience or context she intended.
That distinction helps explain why a practice that feels generous to one reader can feel like a loss of control to a writer. Fans may save a story because they value it and want it to remain available. Authors may still want to choose where it is hosted and who can access it.
One prominent shared collection, the Archive Salvation Google Drive project, faced criticism after launching. A spokesperson told WIRED the project offered a way for authors to request removal. A November 3 statement on a moderator’s TikTok said the drive had been hacked and was no longer accessible, although the group behind it continued sharing fanfics in a closed Discord server.
The statement acknowledged both the controversy and the enjoyment the drive brought to readers and authors who submitted stories. It also speculated that the hacker opposed drives like it. The episode showed how a backup effort can itself become a target and a source of conflict.
Authors and readers disagree over responsibility
The arguments spread beyond the drives themselves. Avery said some readers contacted her demanding to know where her fics were available. On X, users criticized writers who raised concerns, with one saying that writers who hate readers would kill fandoms. Others accused an artist who objected to noncontributors weighing in on sharing of being “self-righteous” and “entitled.”
Riley, a writer with over 90,000 followers across X and Instagram, also faced backlash after sharing a Google doc cataloging some fanfiction drives on November 2. Some people argued the document could expose AO3 users to doxing or violate their privacy. Riley deleted it and made their X account private. They told WIRED they had not anticipated the potential harmful effects of compiling the document.
These disagreements point to competing expectations inside fandom. Readers may see availability as a way to sustain a community and preserve beloved stories. Writers may see permission as a basic condition of sharing, especially when a work is copied into a large collection or linked in a public document.
New spaces promise writers more control
The outage also directed attention to other platforms. Ellipsus, a collaborative writing service with an anti-AI stance founded in 2022, saw new sign-ups rise more than 500 percent since the outage began, according to employee and writer Allegra Rosenberg. Views of its public reader links increased heavily as well.
Ellipsus gives authors options for controlling who sees their work and how readers interact with it. Writers can enable comments, while readers can leave “props,” the platform’s term for kudos. It offers custom fonts and themes, and includes a feature that exports work directly to AO3.
Those features speak to a broader need revealed by the shutdown: writers want to share work while setting boundaries around access and interaction. A backup or alternative can help readers retain access, but it does not automatically resolve questions about permission, privacy or who manages a story’s copies.
Fanfiction’s wider visibility adds pressure. Avery described older work suddenly reaching new audiences after snippets and graphics spread on social platforms. Rosenberg connected the community’s unease to fandom’s history of takedown controversies on Fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, which she said contributed to AO3’s founding.
The outage has made a familiar tension harder to ignore. Readers want stories to remain available; authors want a say in how their work circulates. The internet can preserve fanfiction well beyond the platform where it first appeared, but persistence alone does not settle who should decide how it is shared.