Attention fanfic writers: If you use Google Docs to write/store/back-up your fics, you might want to download anything you don’t already have backed up elsewhere. Google is apparently invading and deleting people’s personal drive content thanks to the FOSTA/SESTA bill that recently passed through Congress. Essentially, it criminalizes ANY platform where sexual content could be placed.
It may also be worth making sure you have offline back-ups of any and all fics you have posted here on Tumblr and on AO3, in case Yahoo get antsy (they’ve been cracking down on the porn bot tumblrs already) and OTW face a legal challenge to take down AO3. I’m hoping that’s not the case – but I was on LiveJournal during Strikethrough in 2007 and I remember the way that whole communities as well as individual LJ accounts were deleted and purged; it was instrumental in the founding of AO3 in the first place. That was a widespread purge of fanfic writers and communities, LGBT+ communities and writers and more, all due to legal threats that SixApart, the company that owned and hosted LiveJournal, received due to allegedly hosting paedophile content. After Strikethrough was over and LJ admitted they’d gone OTT, there were a number of communities and accounts that didn’t get reinstated. I’ve always been quite careful not to have my Tumblr flagged up as NSFW in part because of that. Given the number of Facebook accounts that get temporary or permanent suspensions thanks to malicious false reports, I have very little confidence that Tumblr’s staff won’t make mistakes.
I’m not sure what this means for collaborative fics; but Google Docs probably aren’t a safe platform for that anymore.
If this is news to anyone else, listen, whatever happens in the world of politics, backing up your stuff is always a good and necessary thing. Do it and do it often. Be wise. Nothing is certain. Nothing is stable. Even data decays. In a world of rapidly-decreasing hard copies, you must perform backups. It’s not paranoia, it’s prevention.
@tisfan@27dragons I know you both use it so I thought it would be a good idea to tag you but I’m not sure if anyone else does so, please, be safe and save everything you can wherever you can.
If they touch Ao3 I fucking hope there will be a revolution overseas to bring it back, killing of everyone who tried to get us off of our drug.
Creators should beware of google for more than just their privacy policies and any “decency” enforcement. Pay attention to the terms of service. They state:
“When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).” [emphasis mine]
I will never use google docs for any of my creative work.
SIGNAL BOOST
I feel like a jerk for saying this, but as someone who’s had sites (dedicated to stories and poetry, fwiw) taken down without warning for “obscenity” before in various purges about various things, I find myself wondering what people expected.
Fandom people who like policing content: this is why we don’t. It’s not because we love pedophiles (or think there are no iffy things about sex work, or…) It’s because this is what happens. Whole swaths of stuff gets deleted, and there really isn’t much thought put into what that is.
You might be happy that someone’s underage fic goes bye bye… but your deeply personal fic about Csa you survived is likely to go too.
From the point of view of an overworked or disgusted censor (or an automated one), they’re the same.
“Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art.
Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.”
But the rest of the post is very good regardless: Back up your work. Always. Always.
funeral-biscuit 