every day I learn bot comments on ao3 are stooping lower and lower

anyway if you get a comment like this, chances are that they are bot and their goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to delete your work, most certainly (from what I’ve heard) it’s because they want to “safely” steal your work, use it to train their ai without you being able to rightfully claim ownership of your work since “there’s no proof that the work was stolen/was posted elsewhere first by you” because the original source has already been deleted.

THEY ARE ALL BOTS. at first it was “ao3 is deleting fics and your entire account will be affected unless you delete the fics yourself” then it was “this work contains contents that are illegal and they have already reported you and your fic to the police” (yes, that’s how desperate these bots are), and now it’s this.

report their comments to ao3 for spam—in this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment too—and don’t pay attention to them, most importantly don’t delete your works, don’t feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on people’s works at random to get people to delete their works. (or even if they’re not bot, they are still pathetic bullies who don’t deserve your time or attention.)

DO NOT USE GOOGLE DOCS FOR FANFIC

This is going to get really long but if you are a fanfic writer that uses google docs, it's so important that you read this as it affects you

If you haven't been aware about the previous discussion going around regarding google docs and what's been going on for about the last year now, let me recap it really fast: their shitty ai has *allegedly* (i mean we pretty much know but just to be safe) been scraping your work for ai training purposes and also using ai to moderate the content you are writing in docs - meaning that if it finds anything it doesn't approve of, like violence or sexual content, your docs will be deleted or locked for breaking policy, even if it's not.

Since July, I’ve only noticed the moderation affecting a few users here and there, but over the last couple of days my social feeds have shown me several fanfic writers from multiple fandoms posting about how their backup fic docs or works in progress docs are being deleted without warning or any kind of notice.

The screenshot above (via this tiktok) is from a couple hours ago & sadly that writer lost pretty much their entire collection of fics, and unfortunately they are not the only person this has happened to.

The purge that is happening right now seems to be SPECIFICALLY TARGETING FANFICS and (so far) not any other docs or novels in progress. But it’s a mass deletion, not just one or two doc like before.

IF YOU USE GOOGLE DOCS TO WRITE OR GOOGLE DRIVE TO BACK UP FICS: please please pleaseeeee start downloading your work before you lose it for good.

This is not meant to cause panic, but I heavily consider it time sensitive as I would just really hate for this to happen to anyone here or anywhere else. Check to see if you are missing any wips or if your docs are locked.

If you need help figuring out how to download your work, or need ideas on where to write or store your work going forward, many of us fellow fanfic writers would be happy to share that info with you based on our writing processes. I'll share some resources below, and if you have any that i'm missing please comment them so others can look into it as well!

If this has happened to you, first of all: I'm so sorry, and secondly: please share your experience!

Other writing platforms/softwares:

*I only use ellipsus and notion (both free versions) so I cannot speak for the others - please do your own research!!

Also, this writer tested some of the above, plus others, and shared his thoughts in this article & video.

If you know a writer that uses google docs/drive please pass this info along to them!!!!

This is genuinely concerning.....