Blocking of AO3 in Russia

On April 15, 2023, shortly after midnight Moscow time, the Russian government blocked access to the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own (AO3) in Russia. Unlike the Chinese censorship of AO3 in 2020, the block was not immediately covered by international news media outlets, but individual Russian users on social media confirmed that they could no longer access the site without a VPN. As of 2024, AO3 is still blocked, and Russian users need VPNs or other workarounds to browse the site.
The blame was placed on a Ukrainian twitter user who had reported some fanfics to the Russian censorship agency, r/AO3, 16 April 2023., likely as retaliation for the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the ultimate cause of the block is Russian laws legalizing Internet censorship and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. In particular, an update to Russia's "LGBT propaganda" law in December 2022 prompted Russian Ficbook users to move to AO3, which hosts queer content made illegal under the new law. Meanwhile, the migration of the Russian fanfic community was noticed by Ukrainian AO3 users, who were not glad to see the newcomers.
After English and Mandarin, Russian is the third-most popular language on AO3., accessed 1 September 2024. Count of works by language: 11.8 million English; 850,753 中文-普通话 國語; 284,602 Русский. Fourth place is Español with 172,391 works. 
==Timeline==
*December 5, 2022: Russian president Vladimir Putin signs an amendment to the 2013 "LGBT propaganda" law, expanding the prohibition on sharing positive information about LGBT topics from those under 18 to everyone. 
*December 5: Russian users of Ficbook, the most popular Russian-language fanfic site, become aware of a change in Ficbook's terms of service., twitter search accessed 23 April 2023., 5 December 2022."авторам рекомендую перелить все на ао3, а читателям скачать все любимое, ибо фикбук охуел в край" (I recommend to the authors to transfer everything to ao3, and to the readers to download everything they love, because the ficbook has gone to hell) , 5 December 2022. Many fans start moving their fic to AO3."на этой неделе буду перевозить все слэш-фанфики с фикбука на ao3" (this week I will be moving all slash fanfics from ficbook to ao3) , 5 December 2022., 6 December 2022., 6 December 2022., anonymous thread, fail_fandomanon, 7 December 2022.
*December 5/6: Some Ukrainian fans express their joy at Russian fans being inconvenienced, 6 December 2022., 5 December 2022., 6 December 2022., 6 December 2022., but are upset at the thought that more Russian fanfic will be on AO3, 7 December 2022., 6 December 2022., 6 December 2022.. Some express a desire to stop the Russian fans from gaining access to AO3, by spamming the invite queue, 6 December 2022., 6 December 2022. or by unspecified means, 6 December 2022. or by getting AO3 banned in RussiaNote that the hidden tweet in reply is under Nick_Teygu's new username. , 6 December 2022..
*December 6: Ficbook posts on their official telegram channel that they plan to create a separate website for all slash and femslash, called "slashbook". "Russia has passed a law banning propaganda of non-traditional relationships and gender reassignment. Propaganda, in the interpretation of the law, is the creation of a positive image of these very relations. Some works on Ficbook may fit this definition."Machine translation of "В России принят закон о запрете пропаганды нетрадиционных отношений и смены пола. Пропаганда, в трактовке закона, это — создание позитивного образа этих самых отношений. Некоторые работы на Фикбуке могут подходить под это определение." , 6 December 2022.
*December 9: Nick_Teygu, a Ukrainian Twitter user, reports Russian-language fanfics tagged "Underage" and "Pedophilia" to Roskomnadzor.
*April 6, 2023: Russian news outlet Vedomosti reports that Roskomnadzor has demanded AO3 remove 16 stories and is planning to block the site if AO3 doesn't comply.
*April 6: Nick_Teygu tweets that 16 is less than what she found and comments about submitting another report to Roskomnadzor.
*April 14: At 10:25 p.m. UTC+3, Nick_Teygu tweets a screencap of a 7:37pm email from Roskomnadzor confirming that the fic she reported on April 6 contains illegal content.Wayback Machine copy of Nick_Teygu's tweet containing a screencap of Roskom's email reply
*April 15: At 12:27 a.m. UTC+3 or shortly before, Russian AO3 users start reporting that they can no longer open the website without a VPN., tweet by dasharevv, 12:32 a.m. UTC+3, 15 April 2023., anon thread at Holiwarka. Post #7375 says, "Только у меня сайт не открывается?" (Is it just me the site won't open for?).
*April 15: By morning Russian twitter users find Nick_Teygu's tweets, 15 April 2023., and word spreads that she is to blame.
==Current Status?==
As of April 20, 2023, Russian AO3 users were reporting that the site could only be accessed with a VPN., fail_fandomanon, 2023-04-20. As of March 2024, posts in the Russian-language forum Holiwarka indicate that the website was still blocked, but users were sharing workarounds.
Unlike with AO3's fate in China, English-language news outlets never covered AO3's censorship in Russia (they did cover the DDOS attack on the website in July by a Russian hacking group), but some Russian-language media reported on the incident.
The Russian government has a website for looking up blocked websites; search results for AO3's url turn up three items described as page-limited blocks (ограничивается к странице) dated 12/22/2022, 12/22/2022, and 03/13/2023. The website explains, "Please note that the presence of an Internet site in the Registry does not at all mean a complete restriction of access to it, since access may be limited to a separate page of the site on the Internet." (Обращаем Ваше внимание, что наличие сайта сети "Интернет" в Реестре вовсе не означает полное ограничение доступа к нему, так как доступ может ограничиваться к отдельной странице сайта в сети "Интернет".) The block reason given is Article 15.1
According to Roskomsvoboda's register of banned websites at rublacklist.net (Accessed 22 March 2024.), AO3 is blocked due to three Russian-language fanfics marked Underage:
*БИБЛИОФИЛЫ, окончание by Tpaje. Fandom: "Mom-son", with 2 kudos and 457 hits as of April 17, published on 28 January 2023.
*НАСТЕНЬКА - ПОРНОЗВЕЗДА by georgiy901. Fandom: "Lolicon", with 2 kudos and 779 hits, published on 18 September 2022.
*Мессия by Marshaal. Fandom: Spider-Man and Avengers. Pairing: Tony Stark/Peter Parker, with 42 kudos and 1183 hits, published on 11 November 2021.
The date listed on rublacklist.net is 04/14/2023, though Russian social media users did not report that the site was inaccessible until after midnight, April 15.
==Ukrainian Reports==
A Ukrainian twitter user, @Nick_Teygu, who appears to be an MXTX fan, accessed 19 April 2023., claimed to have reported the archive to Roskomnadzor, Russia's censorship agency. The twitter account has since gone private, but some tweets were captured on the Wayback Machine here, confirming that on April 14, Nick_Teygu gleefully shared a screencap of the Russian government's emailed response to their report. The Russian government thanked them for their "active citizenship" (активную гражданскую позицию) and confirmed that the story they reported contained illegal content. The twitter thread contained a quote tweet from another twitter thread from April 6, 2023, in which the same user decided to report a fic they thought might be a violation of Russian law. The reported fanfic, now deleted, was a Russian-language gen story about suicide for the Underworld Office fandom.
However, it seems unlikely that Nick_Teygu's report of that fanfic in particular was responsible for the block. On April 6, Russian newsmedia reported that Roskomnadzor was planning to block AO3 if the site didn't take down 16 sexually explicit stories featuring underage characters that the agency had reported to the site between late December and mid-March. (AO3 had not responded to the demands.), vedomosti.ru, 6 April 2023. In a screencap shared by Russian twitter user nelehitch, Nick_Teygu was surprised that Roskomnadzor had found so few stories and decided to report more:
nelehitch's screencaps show that Nick_Teygu had tried to report AO3 in December 2022, by submitting not individual fanfic URLs, but the search results for all Russian-language fanworks tagged "Underage" and "Pedophilia"., Apr 15, 2023. As of April 20, 2023, the search results URL contains 44 fanworks from a variety of fandoms, some labeled simply "Lolicon".The AO3 search URL shared in the screencap
Armed with more screencaps, nelehitch claimed that Nick_Teygu's motive in reporting was to promote the Ukrainian language on AO3:
Nick_Teygu's April 6 tweet encouraged others to join the "cyberbullying" ("До речі ну, якщо комусь ще хочеться доєднатися до кібербулінгу, ось їх форма")Wayback Machine copy of Nick_Teygu's April 6, 2023, twitter thread, 15 April 2023., so other people could have submitted reports for other fanfics.
===Ukrainian Language and Russian Imperialism===
As described below, Ukrainian twitter users were supportive of Nick_Teygu's act and may even have seen it as part of the Ukrainian war effort. To add historical context, many Ukrainians are bilingual and/or native Russian speakers due to Russian imperialism. Ukraine was formerly part of the Soviet Union and has been going through a process of Derussification, and since the 2022 Russian invasion many Russian speakers, The Guardian, 6 Mar 2023. have switched to speaking Ukrainian, The Washington Post, July 28, 2023.. Promoting the Ukrainian language is part of the effort to protect Ukrainian cultural identity and separate Ukraine from the Russian cultural sphere; Putin justified the invasion in part by claiming that Ukraine was part of Russia and had a Russian identity, and Russia has been accused of genocide against Ukraine by denying Ukraine's right to exist and stealing Ukrainian children. See also this New Yorker interview with Masha Gessen, which mentions Ukrainian responses to Russian cultural imperialism.
The impact of Ukrainian language promotion can be seen on AO3 itself; In 2024 Ukrainian is now the tenth-most popular language on the archive, with the majority of works published after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.As of 1 September 2024, the Українська language tag has 20,500 works. Of these, 19,507 were first posted on or after February 24, 2022, the day of the invasion. .
One example connecting Ukrainian fanactivity to the geopolitical context is this Twitter thread from December 18, 2022, in which a Ukrainian user, shishloi, calls on their fellow Chinese media fans to condemn other Ukrainians for continuing to write Russian fanfic: 
Meanwhile, another Ukrainian user, bj_jupa, was upset that one particular AO3 user was translating fanfic by Russians on ficbook into Ukrainian, arguing that the person was mistaken in thinking they were supporting Ukrainian content., tweet by bj_jupa, 7 Dec 2022. bj_jupa even argued that by doing so, they were dragging "the Russian swamp into the Ukrainian information space"Machine translation of "краще б я не заходила на аккаунт цієї чмоні... вона тягне російське болото в український інфапростір, нормалізуючи ось таку парашу.. оаоаикоаолакьаллвдудаьлалв мене зараз розірве я прошу рятуйте" , 7 December 2022., likely a reference to Ukraine's efforts to defend itself against Russia's disinformation campaigns and cyberwarfare. In 2024, Twitter user shiroinsomnia used the same term, український інфопростір (Ukrainian infospace), to complain about AO3 users posting Ukrainian translations of Russian fanfics., tweet by shiroinsomnia, 19 March 2024.
In late April 2023, bj_jupa agreed with a third Twitter user who was complaining about a different Ukrainian who translated a Russian-language Harry Potter fic from ficbook, tweet by ficwriterka, 27 April 2023. (although that translator mentioned in the comments that the author was Ukrainian, 18 Apr 2023.). bj_jupa shared screenshots of their own comments on another AO3 translation arguing that they had quit ficbook because they didn't want to be exposed to Russian fanfic anymore and didn't appreciate running into it again on AO3. The AO3 comment concluded, "я вважаю в нас повиннен розвиватися свій фанфікшен." (I believe we should develop our fanfiction), 28 April 2023. The translator has since deleted all their AO3 works.
==Other Causes==
Meanwhile, another Ukrainian twitter user said that before Russian twitter found Nick_Teygu's tweets, Russians had assumed that either ficbook had reported AO3 or that AO3 was blocked for not sharing requested data with the Russian government."Якщо походити по пошуку, то можна побачити, що до того, як росня знайшла твіт Тейґу, більшість з них була впевнена, що донос походить від фікбуку. Або що взагалі доносу не було, просто ао3 відмовився видавати дані, навідміну від фб" , 15 Apr 2023.
Russians knew in advance that the block was coming because a Roskomnadzor official had given an interview the week before indicating that if they didn't get a response from AO3 about deleting works that violated Russian law, they would block the website. Although the material Nick_Teygu reported, and the timing of when Nick_Teygu reported it, matched the Roskomnadzor official's description, it is still possible, even likely, that other people reported AO3 as well. Nick_Teygu was the only one to admit it publicly on twitter.
Russia's 2013 anti-LGBT law "criminalizes any positive discussion of LGBT people, identities, or issues in forums that might be accessible to minors.", The Advocate, October 14 2014. The law was expanded in December 2022 to cover all ages, making it illegal to publish any positive depictions of queer people in books, films, etc. Now AO3 was violating Russian law simply by hosting slash and femslash. As of May 2023, 56% of the archive is tagged either f/f or m/m, and 63% of Russian fanworks (147598 of 236099) are tagged f/f or m/m.AO3 Works Search results, 13 May 2023.
===Changes to Russian Law===
While gloating about her successful report to the Russian government, Nick_Teygu pointed out that the block would have happened sooner or later anyway:
An April 19, 2023, news report about new anti-LGBT legislation by Russian news site paperpaper.io included this explanation:
On April 8, 2023, the Federal News Agency (aka Internet Research Agency) ran an article predicting that AO3 would be blocked "because of Harry Potter fan fiction":
To be clear, AO3 does not allow child pornography, which is illegal in the United States (where AO3 is hosted). The AO3's terms of service says, "Content may not be uploaded to OTW's servers if it contains or links to child pornography (images of real children).", accessed 20 April 2023.
===Sabotage by Ficbook?===
As early as April 6, when the Vedomosti article was published, some Russian fans speculated that Ficbook, a for-profit Russian language fanfic website, had reported AO3 to the government in order to beat the competition."/надел шапочку из фольги/ а вдруг Костик настучал на конкурентов, чтобы фикбук не прикрыли?" (Machine translation: "/ put on a tinfoil hat / what if Kostya snitched on competitors so that the ficbuk would not be covered up?") , Holiwarka anon forum, 6 April 2023., 6 April 2023. On the Holiwarka forum, anons discussed how the Ficbook site admin was quoted in the same Vedomosti article and whether it was just a coincidence that AO3 was Ficbook's main competitor. Others pointed out that fandom had plenty of haters who would be glad to report AO3. See the thread.
==Fan Reactions==
===On Twitter===
====Russians react to the block====
Russian twitter users noticed immediately that the site was blocked and voiced their feelings in Russian and English:
====Ukrainians react to the block====
Ukrainian twitter users were unsympathetic and pointed out that twitter was also blocked in Russia, so if they were tweeting, they obviously had a VPN and still had access to AO3., 15 April 2023. Some responses were sarcastic, disdainful, or hostile, and many highlighted that Russians only had to worry about website access while Ukrainians were getting killed by Russians:
====Reactions to the Ukrainian report====
After reacting to the block itself, Russian and Ukrainian users expressed divergent opinions upon learning that a Ukrainian had reported the site to the Russian government. Although Nick_Teygu's thoughts on Russians' response to her action are now hidden, a Twitter search turns up some replies to her from other users. In general, Ukrainian-language users seemed to express support for Nick_Teygu's action, while Russian-language users were not so happy:
====Heated rhetoric, abuse, etc.====
Some of the discourse between Russian and Ukrainian users became very intense. Twitter does not have a reputation for inspiring nuanced and genteel debate in the best of circumstances, and in this circumstance Russians saw the Ukrainians as collaborating with a repressive regime and Ukrainians saw the Russians as denying their collective responsibility for Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, 15 April 2023., 15 April 2023.. It's also likely that trolls and pro-war Russian users were involved in the discussions.
Some Ukrainian users reported later that Russians were wishing death on Nick_Teygu, tweet by cucumber1bro, 17 April 2023."I'll speak your pig-dog language. I saw a lot of retweets where Ukrainians were wished death from missiles and the like. Say thank you again that you're just a bitch rotten nits you're bald" (Поговорю на твоём свинособачьем. Видела дохуя ретвитов где украинцам желали смерти от ракет и тому подобное. Скажи ещё спасибо что вас просто сука гнобят гнида ты плешивая) ; in some cases the worst responses may have been reported to Twitter and deletedtwitter thread: one Ukrainian replies to Nick_Teygu with, "By the way, you can complain about a direct threat of violence" (До речі, можна поскаржитися за пряму погрозу насильством). Two others reply that they have reported the tweets. , 15 April 2023.. One Russian replied to Nick_Teygu with an image of a bombed out Ukrainian apartment building with the text "зато у нас есть AO3" (But we have AO3), 15 April 2023.. This tweet garnered 51 angry quote-tweets; one commented sarcastically, "'good russians' until their fav website is blocked 🥱", 15 April 2023.For more context on the phrase "good russians", see NPR's Rough Translation podcast episode The Good Russians.
A few Russians commented in surprise and alarm at Ukrainian responses, or tried to argue with Ukrainians., 15 April 2023. Several Ukrainians wished death on a Russian user after the Russian user mentioned having clinical depression., 15 April 2023., 15 April 2023., 15 April 2023. One Ukrainian, who expressed disapproval of the reporting itself, commented,
====More links====
More twitter discussion threads:
* (Apr 15, 2023)
* (Apr 15, 2023)
* (Apr 15, 2023)
* (Apr 17, 2023)
* (Apr 16, 2023)
===Other Websites===
*Reddit: 
** (April 14, 2023)
** (April 17, 2023)
*Weibo
** (April 15, 2023)
** (April 15, 2023)
===Retaliation against the Ukrainian reporter===
Some Russian twitter users reported Nick_Teygu's AO3 account to AO3 itself, arguing that she should be banned for "cooperation with the authoritarian regime and its illegitimate bodies in order to block the resource.""Имеет смысл просить руководство AO3 о блокировке её аккаунта – за сотрудничество с авторитарным режимом и его нелегитимными органами с целью блокировки ресурса. Наверняка у них есть такое правило." , Apr 15, 2023.
As of March 2024, the Ukrainian user's AO3 account is still active. (Accessed 22 March 2024.) The AO3 account doesn't mention a twitter handle, so it's unclear whether AO3 determined that their behavior wasn't a terms of service violation or they couldn't prove the account was owned by the same person.
==Further Reading==
===Media Coverage===
*Vedomosti: (6 April 2023)
*Novaya Gazeta: (6 April 2023)
*Federal News Agency: (8 April 2023)
*The Insider: (April 18, 2023)
*Afisha Daily: (April 18, 2023)
===Fannish Links===
==References==
Category:Russian-Speaking Fandom
Category:Archive of Our Own
Category:2023 Events