Fanfiction writers and readers are mourning. Archive of Our Own, or AO3, had to shut down without warning due to a hacking event. The site that boasts 11 million registered users and 18 million works of fanfic might be down for weeks.
Fanfiction readers are legion, and these works have become a major force in reading culture. As English professor Anne Jamison, author of Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, pointed out to The New York Times, AO3 can offer the only LGBTQ+ content available to readers in countries where queer relationships are criminalized.
Fanfics have even become traditional publishing bestsellers:
The response to the shutdown is exactly what you’d expect from an entrenched fandom community, with one X user invoking the almighty Mamdani to help bring back the good-good. Others are scouting out resources and downloaded fanfic libraries to help prop up their community during the outage.
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AO3 might be down for up to four weeks with the possibility of bringing the site back in a “degraded state.” Reportedly, no data has been deleted as a result of the security incident, but AO3 hasn’t ruled out a stolen user database.
Rebecca Tushnet, an AO3 founder (and legal scholar at Harvard Law School), told The Times that the team is prioritizing safety over speed.
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