AO3 News

Opting out of gifts

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Published:
2022-02-04 21:31:39 UTC
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In the next few days, we'll be rolling out a new preference to give users more control over who can give them gift works. This change is an important step in our ongoing work to give users more options to control their experience on the Archive and limit unwanted interactions.

The preference will be called "Allow others to give me gift works outside gift exchanges and prompt memes."

When this preference is enabled, any AO3 user will be able to give you a work. That's the current behavior on the Archive, and it will be the default behavior for all existing users.

When the preference is disabled, the only users who will be able to give you works are users who have either been assigned to create a fanwork for you in a gift exchange or claimed one of your non-anonymous prompts in a prompt meme. In other words, if you absolutely do not want to receive gifts from anyone, you can disable this preference and avoid signing up for challenges.

The preference will be disabled by default for accounts created after the roll out. (We'd usually disable any new preferences by default, but allowing gifts is necessary to avoid interfering with ongoing challenges.)

If a user has the preference disabled and you attempt to give them an unrequested gift, you will receive an error message telling you the user does not allow gifts.

The preference only applies to new gifts, so you will still be able to edit any existing gifts without removing the recipient.

Your Gifts page will remain accessible regardless of whether you've enabled or disabled the preference. You will still be able to refuse existing or new gifts.

Wait, what?

  • If you're an existing AO3 user, nothing will change unless you update your preferences.
  • If you never want to receive gift works, you can uncheck "Allow others to give me gift works outside gift exchanges and prompt memes" on your preferences page and avoid signing up for any challenges.

We'll update this post to let you know when the changes have been deployed.

Update 10:10 UTC 6 February 2022: These changes have now been deployed.