"Communications also established an OTW RedNote (小红书) account in June. This will be a second platform for us to connect with Chinese-speaking fandom (along with our existing Weibo account)."
Ummm I don't mean to speak ill of Chinese netizens, but there are people on the Chinese internet spreading pirated/crawler sites of AO3, because some of them don't know how to use a VPN to log in AO3. I'm a little worried that promoting AO3 and OTW there might have some bad consequences.😔
It is banned in China. What's more surprising is that it wasn't for a long time, but perhaps the biggest fandom drama in history happened and the government decided to ban AO3 as a result.
Unfortunately, there's always going to be a conflict between authors who want to control their works and viewers who want want to access and preserve them. I'm afraid I have to side with the viewers on this. Mirrors and copies of stories might be the only way people in some places can access AO3 content. And that's likely to become a bigger issue with the current push towards "age verification"/censorship across Europe and elsewhere.
Thank you for sharing your concern about unofficial AO3 websites.
There do exist proxy sites which permit access to AO3 through unofficial URLs. AO3 is not associated with and does not control proxy sites. Our policies require proxies to use a banner at the top of the page to alert you that you're not on the official site. If you encounter a proxy that doesn't use this banner, please report it to us.
I'm okay with this. Fanfiction infringes copyright too... fundamentally, I think it's a lot more important that people who would be otherwise restricted from fanfiction (VPNs cost money, and also, I feel like it must be difficult to get a VPN in China or the censorship would be a lot weaker) are also able to break free of the censorship in their lives and read as much as they want. It's important, it's fun, it's inspiring, and also consider how much friendlier fanfiction can be to queer people and alternative views than the Chinese mainstream.
Well, that’s right. Many people in China want to use AO3 but don’t know how to set up a VPN, so they look for mirror sites on various domestic browsers and social platforms. I’ve also seen people post on major Chinese social media platforms asking for AO3 mirror links, and commenters share these sites via private messages. Most people in China may know AO3’s original URL, yet accessing it via a VPN is out of reach for most.
Some pirated copy sites will repost works that are only visible to logged-in AO3 users, or even redirect visitors to unrelated pornographic websites. I’m worried this might bring negative repercussions to AO3 itself. （Sorry, this text was translated by a Chinese machine translation tool, so it may not be entirely accurate. ）
Comment on June 2026 Newsletter, Volume 212
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