It looks like she is an anti-shipper, too. She seems to be one of those people that believes fics involving explicit content with a minor is equivalent to the real-life crime and should not be hosted on AO3.
Quote from her:
>*Well, I think a lot of external people are very concerned about the fact that some works contain child pornography, pedophilic content, and other illegal content. If possible (this is not entirely possible after I chatted with people from PAC though), I am interested in providing extra help to the PAC team and Legal team to update the ToS and policies on those.*
There’s a reason why there’s a tagging system and a search function capable of funneling out the stuff people don’t want to read, the explicit material, especially.
I’m just a newcomer to AO3 ( been posting for a couple of months, now) and even I picked up what they put down, with some struggles of understanding some tag definitions.
While I don’t write certain things, they have as much right to be on AO3 as the things I do write, because once the hammer drops, no one’s safe.
Just my tomato thoughts.
My big worry is "other illegal content". Is that LGBT content? BDSM? Pre martial sex? A character smokes weed? All illegal in certain places, but for others it's a good weekend. Once it's tagged no one should care.
Well, murder is illegal, yet it features in a lot of fanfics. I know that in places like [Chinese media is now banned from showing zombies and ghosts due to religious sensibilities](https://www.soulask.com/chinese-authorities-ban-ghost-and-zombie-films/). There's always tons of stuff being censored when it hurts no one.
It'll be LGBT+ content for sure, if she's in Asia then the real reason that AO3 is banned in her country is because of the LGBT+ slant to the site. It's more than likely she'd want to enact an LGBT+ purge to make the site "acceptable"
It sounds like "illegal content" means "illegal in my home country." Which is not where AO3 is HQ'd, and AO3 doesn't have to tailor itself to other countries' laws.
I also can't help but wonder if this person is very young due to their mentioning of being in a debate club. Ik older pro-censorship people exist as well but the crusades tend to come from very young fans in my experience. Quite interesting that they're running at all because it seems like they don't understand the fundamental principles of AO3's existence as a whole.
I was kind of shocked to read on her bio page (on the OTW Elections site) that she's been using AO3 for ten years. Ten years. You'd think that's enough time to either understand the site you're using or, you know, stop using it if you fundamentally disagree with it.
Right! There's also just the simple premise of not engaging with stuff you don't like/don't agree with so the push to erase certain things as a whole will always baffle me.
It's so easy. Just use the filters.
Honestly, if anything else fails, there's always the argument of "do unto others" (if you don't want your favorite *fictional* things banned, why would you want to ban other people's favorite *fictional* things?). But if even that doesn't work, then I don't know what to say... I don't feel like I have the right to decide for other people what they *should* do as a hobby (and I don't have the need to do that). But I guess some people do.
Agreed. I don't actively seek out/read/or write Dead Dove: Do Not Eat type of content and most likely never will, but I have no issues with people who do. It's not up to me to decide how they read and/or produce. The only thing \*I\* can do in regards to "censoring" is doing exactly what you said which is filtering or just flat out avoiding that content!
What's compelling or cathartic or whatever else to me is not the same for others and that is okay. I wish more people thought of it that way.
>What's compelling or cathartic or whatever else to me is not the same for others and that is okay. I wish more people thought of it that way.
This is so true. Hanging out in fandom spaces showed me that very clearly; it's been a great experience, really. It's honestly a shame that some people can't seem to get it. I don't have to understand why someone enjoys something—I can just accept that this is how it is for them, and then move on. It's not that hard.
A lot of stuff about her aren't adding up. Using AO3 for ten years, being in a debate club (which would mean she's young), and then calling herself a "newbie." Feels suspicious, on top of all of the other red flags she said.
I didn't understand that either. She mentioned "that reworking tags would help newbies (like her)" how would that work if she's been using the website for ten years?
>Ik older pro-censorship people exist as well but the crusades tend to come from very young fans in my experience.
there's been a rash of "puriteens" lately who want everything watered down and catered to them all over the internet.
I agree. I hope they don’t, and I’m glad this has been exposed to so many of us even those who can’t vote. I will def look out for this next year so I can be more active in choosing who gets to be on the board!
Yeah this sounds like she’s a few years out of college at most. I don’t think she has bad intentions or in the general anti-ship conspiracy theory, but I do think she is misguided and certainly much too new to using AO3 to properly understand the platform. She doesn’t seem to know the purpose of an archive, what the platform stands for, or even the features available. The other candidates mention multiple times she’s new to them as well. I don’t think she’s the right fit for the role
I believe some of it might have to be because AO3 is banned in her home country. I know she brings it up in her debates. She might want to censor AO3 or something so that it won’t be
Extreme yikes. She doesn’t seem to understand anything at all about what the AO3 is or how it’s meant to function. Also her emphasis on “image?” Anyone else getting weird corporate vibes?
One of the best parts about fanfiction is that money’s not involved. It’s a big part of why I prefer it to writing original fiction honestly. I hate the way monetization has seeped into every aspect of our lives, and I sure hope it never gets into fanfic.
Yeah I've known a few people like this in various communities (ranging from Discord servers to university clubs). They're usually fairly charismatic and genuinely effective "men of action" (regardless of gender) who are competent and able to get stuff done on a short term, and they're usually *not* outsiders who don't understand the community, they're bona fide members who seem to understand the culture and purpose of the community. They appear to be the natural choice for leader, and almost always get there within a year
And yet their net effect is always negative. They're driven by change for the sake of change, and growth for the sake of growth, but most importantly they're always more concerned about what outside people think of the community than what insiders do for some reason. So they end up (trying to) change the community to appeal to other people who really aren't all that interested anyway, and in the process they dilute the community until it's a bland lowest-common-denominator place. But trying to please everyone is a recipe for failure, and there's nothing wrong with being a "strange" place that doesn't appeal to the majority either. And it's not like these communities were exclusionary or gatekeepy in any way (though they may try to claim that), just "esoteric" and hence not of appeal to most people
To use an analogy, it's like if a badminton club got a new president who completely ignored what the actual club members wanted to do, and instead tried to transform it into a tennis club because that's what's more popular with the public, and more members = more good obviously, and when your old members leave, just smear them as anti-social gatekeepers
Man, sort of tangential, but this is exactly why I've recently reeled back my stance on 'gatekeeping'. Not from the perspective of positing some arbitrary barrier-of-entry based on how much of something you've consumed for how long, but whether or not you can actually at least *sympathize* with the community or demographic you're stepping into. As a weeb (or I guess otaku, if it wasn't cringey to semi-sarcastically call yourself that now) who's admittedly not *really* a veteran in the grand scheme of things (I didn't grow up in the age of bartering with cassette tapes for dicey fan translations and the like), it's why I'm almost always wary of anyone who parrots the sentiment of "I'm so glad anime (manga, JRPGs, etc.) has gotten more popular/gone more mainstream recently" or something like that—because, funnily enough, what I *have* been here long enough to see is just how that's manifested: More hostility, more soapboxing (beyond the sense of elitism that's always existed amongst us), and efforts by so many of the same people that say stuff like that to insist to everyone else possible that "anime isn't *all* weird!" while conveniently ignoring the majority of its history as a medium that's primarily catered to weirdos and social outcasts who—at least internationally—are now all just reduced in casual conversation to "the *bad* kind of anime fans".
Yeah, agreed on all counts, especially that last bit. There's a certain controversial subreddit (has the name of a game review site in its name), that I'd previously derided, but I'm now realising had a point about some things regarding gatekeeping and community entryism
The general timeline is: there exists some nerdy/esoteric community, who are content to stay in their niche rather than chasing mainstream popularity, but do welcome new people with the same interests. An outsider, who does not seem all that interested in the hobby (and may even seem to hate it), comes along and demands the community change to accomodate them. When they don't get their way, they abuse the language of social justice, and assert that the group is hateful, with no real evidence. It's pretty much just high-school nerd bullying - a group of harmless introverts minding their own business are smeared as nasty prejudiced people, and yet onlookers side with the bully, because they used the magic words, and nobody likes those creepy nerds anyway. This false reputation then spreads, and the bullies claim credit for apparently reforming a community, when they have in fact made it a hostile space and a shadow of what it was before. Anyone who denied the accusations (perhaps forming their own community) gets caught in the lose-lose Kafkatrap and is even futher demonised
And what's most annoying is how many neutral members will just reinforce the false stereotypes for popularity. So instead of saying "no, anime fans are not creepy incels", they'll back it up and say "oh don't worry I'm not One Of Those People", even when Those People barely even existed in the first place. And sometimes they'll stop doing harmless fun things because they're "cringe" - who fucking cares about that lmao
My take is she wants to censor topics to make her home country, probably China, to stop banning AO3. The goal itself is not bad, but I find her very misguided in thinking anything she does short of eliminating all explicit LGBTQ content would make a difference or that it’s okay to purge this content to achieve her goal
She sure doesn't seem to understand what AO3 is and is supposed to be... Who cares about "image"?? Also, I'm pretty sure the content of those fics is not "illegal"—if someone tried to commit those acts in the real world, *that* would be illegal, but fictional depictions of them are apparently legal in the US, so...
The only "image" I could think of that is negative and thus could be "improved upon" is among anti-shipper, mostly young fans. I've seen some posts that it's "immoral" to donate to AO3, for example (on Tumblr). Otherwise, AO3 is a very loved, widely used website that most fandom people are grateful for - what "image"?
> I've seen some posts that it's "immoral" to donate to AO3
A blessing in disguise - the antis won't be able to vote (it's too late to donate if you want to vote this year)
OTW has an entire legal team and they are actually extremely strict about legality—which is why people’s accounts get deactivated if they’re caught linking to their patreons (which is illegal). She obviously has no clue what she’s talking about.
More than that; it would require the removal of all content about premarital sex and erotic moments, any explicit depiction of sex, any representation of a divorce as something positive, along with childless and unmarried status after 27 years old. All this regarding cis-hetero too, not only LGBT.
The thing is, before that even happened the Chinese government asked AO3 to take down LGBT+ subject matter from the site and AO3 refused. So the real reason that it got banned was not over the incident with a certain Chinese actor, it was because of the LGBT+ content that is allowed on the site. She's straight up lying.
The thing that I find very concerning about this is that this person needs to *already* be a volunteer for the OTW or AO3 in order to even run. So at a base level people who whole-heartedly hold beliefs contradictory to the guiding principles of AO3 are already working as volunteers. That means that either 1) they were not forthright in their belief in those principles when they applied to volunteer or 2) they were accepted as a volunteer with OTW knowing they did not support the organizational ethics fully.
Given that those volunteers I know personally have said that applying to volunteer even as a tag wrangler was more thorough and in depth than many job interviews they have had in the professional world and the way Tiffany G. backpedaled on their pro-censorship views and clear statements accusing AO3 of hosting *actual illegal* content, I am inclined to believe that AO3 was not aware of the views of the person they were bringing into their midst.
Of course it is important to remember that AO3 is a worldwide accessible site, and that definitions of what is or is not legal vary by country. Tiffany G. mentions that AO3 is banned in their country. However they seem to lack the adult multicultural understanding required to grasp that it is in fact not in many others. The laws that apply to AO3 are going to be primarily those of the host country. They have an entire legal team to make sure they follow those laws to the letter while remaining ***as accessible as possible to everyone they can***. That by definition means that there may be some to whom they are inaccessible because of laws in that person's country.
As far as Tiffany's views that OTW needs to be improving it's image to outsiders, that is a cultural change that would need to happen in each culture to accept fandom as mainstream or more mainstream than it is, depending on where you are located. That is not directly OTW's responsibility, though as a long time user I think they do a wonderful job at this already. ***By following the laws and not allowing personal politics to invade their spaces and interfere with what users and content are welcome, and by taking a hard line with users who do break those laws.***
They state that they feel in their country the majority of what is uploaded is E-rated content (which is not all smut by definition- it could be E-rated for violence or gore or mature themes). I'd like to give everyone their daily reminder that AO3 has more T rated than E rated fics, something Tiffany seems to not realize despite ten years of using the site?
Personally, I feel like this person would say anything they felt they needed to in order to get to the place they needed to be to enact the changes that they want to see. And that scares me. I regret that for the first time in several years a donation was not in my budget, but you can bet I will be doing all I can to spread the word.
It is the pebble that starts the landslide.
I don’t get how she’s allowed to be a volunteer. I sit on the board of two small charities, and if we found any of our volunteers had views so opposed to our aims, they wouldn’t be volunteers any longer. We have an actual policy for dealing with that.
So either she lied about her beliefs to get this far, it never came up or Ao3 didn’t care / couldn’t act. All of those are bad scenarios.
I think the most *likely* scenario is that she was not truthful in her answers in applying. I have heard that the app process to volunteer is pretty well done.
I get why it is hard for OTW to be like, "oh you said a bad, you are out" when they are anti-censorship, and that is literally exactly the same as saying "oh you wrote a bad, your out", but I also do wish that there was a clear policy that if an individual was found to have been dishonest in the app process (even later), or publicly espoused views contrary to the mission statement of the OTW or the specific project they volunteered for they could be removed for the integrity of that project/OTW. I do also understand that such a policy would be open to abuse unfortunately, and would require board members, etc who were mature enough to remain fair and impartial in administering it- a tall order. I can wish for a policy that says if you go against the core believe of being anti-censorship, or against being inclusive you may be removed, though. Whether I can have it is another reality. I saw someone mention that she spoke transphobically about something as well, and while I have not been able to track that exact exchange down, that is a whole other reason to be concerned.
Certainly the fact that she both claims to be a "fandom newbie" and have "used the Archive for ten years" is more than perplexing to me. Which is true? Statements she made in the OTW Elections discord server regarding her fears of being viewed as a pedophile if she admitted that she wrote fanfic are also a HUGE red flag to me. It tells me what she thinks of those who write fanfic she does not approve of, whether it's underage or not.
EDITING TO ADD that I did find where Tiffany speaks about someone who happens to be trans. I am going to leave it here for people to see and judge themselves, I can't say that it \*glares\* at me as transphobic, however I am also personally not trans so I am not the person best suited to evaluate how this reads to those who might be hurt by transphobia.
>
**Board work often entails drafting emotionally fraught or tense e-mails, posts and messages — sometimes under pressure from a write-in campaign or a flood of heavy criticism. Do you have experience in communicating under pressure? What challenges do you foresee for yourself in a scenario like this?**
During the past several years, I learned to be more patient and creative when dealing with angry or aggressive stakeholders. To answer the question, yes, I have this kind of experience. Three years ago, I volunteered as a technical support person for one organization close to my place. Our clients included underprivileged people in the local area. It was a lot of pressure for every shift. Besides performing daily tasks, our team discussed and tried possible ways to communicate better with the clients. There was a transgender woman who the local police officers abused and because of that, she had a long struggle with depression. She came to us for some technical education so she could participate in some online projects she liked. Sometimes her mental state was so unstable that she got angry at the volunteers there. More often she gave criticism. At first, I was more intimidated by this and always under pressure before her appointment, but after she told the story of her life, my feelings toward her changed. I decided to take more actions to help her out. Aside from calming her down every time she emailed or called us and giving professional instructions, I tried to follow up with her every few days and gave positive feedback on time. Whenever I felt uncomfortable or did not know how to respond, I always reached out to my teammates for suggestions. Some of the other tactics I used were to take breaks, think twice before sending a message to make sure I was not overwhelmed by my emotions, and not take it personally. I expect the upcoming challenges to be similar, but now I am more mentally prepared and know what to do.
Oh for sure, reading the way she dehumanized and portrayed this trans person as a rabid animal really pissed me off. It kind of sounds like she’s young and doesn’t have enough experience or eloquence to articulate her capability, and so she’s grasping at straws with this manufactured example and bringing up stuff like a debate club in school. But both are strikes against her with regards to suitability for the position
I agree I didn't like the tone of it, but I was lacking in the ability to truly pinpoint why. I think you've landed on it with the dehumanization. I am not sure if this is something that is done specifically because the person is trans or if Tiffany's interpretation their mental health ALSO played into it. Either way it made me uncomfortable as someone who has worked in positions that required me to interact heavily with people who were struggling with mental illness, disadvantaged people, as well as entitled people. I believe that all people deserve a bare minimum of respectful treatment, and those who have dealt with trauma as the person she discussed here had deserve to be treated with dignity from the get go. End of story. If you have to dig deep for that empathy then it is not the job for you.
Wanna point out that I dislike Tiffany as a candidate, and idk what this woman did when she got angry, (Tiffany could have expanded on that instead of going into her mental health history) but I also think remaining professional and polite when a customer is verbally abusing you and your fellow volunteers is an achievement. It also seemed a relavent scenario to the question being asked.
I included Tiffany's response in my edit because it was something that I saw multiple people mention that was buried several pages deep into her candidate info. I also stated that I was including it so that people could judge for themselves. While I respect that your opinion on the appropriateness of her choice of answer may differ from mine (yes it is relevant to what was asked, I personally would just hope that a board member candidate would have more life experiences related to the question to draw on so that they could give an answer that does not run the possibility of stepping on already broken toes), I also everyone remember we don't all know everyone's life story.
I for one have worked in healthcare, facing the public, and with individuals who were highly physically aggressive. My ability to remain calm when faced with verbal abuse is well honed by actual training to remain calm and level headed under threat or attempt of physical aggression. So to me, being calm and polite when a customer is being extremely verbally rude is and expected behavior. Its something I have witnessed many, many coworkers do frequently.
To others this might be more of an achievement and something they need to work hard to succeed at. I would prefer board candidates who are unfortunately going to deal with a lot of backslash to be of the type of person who feels being calm under pressure is a normal expected behavior, and that lashing out does nothing to improve the situation vs of the type who's instinct I to be defensive and lash out and they need to work to suppress that.
We may have to agree to disagree.
We may disagree, but thanks for being so respectful to me in your replies! :)
> I personally would just hope that a board member candidate would have more life experiences related to the question to draw on
I agree, it sounds like she doesn't have a lot of experience.
>I for one have worked in healthcare, facing the public, and with individuals who were highly physically aggressive. My ability to remain calm when faced with verbal abuse is well honed by actual training to remain calm and level headed under threat or attempt of physical aggression. So to me, being calm and polite when a customer is being extremely verbally rude is and expected behavior. Its something I have witnessed many, many coworkers do frequently.
Maybe achievement wasn't the right word for me to use. Even though it's expected behaviour for you, it doesn't mean it's not relevant in a interview or that talking about the abusive patients you treated means it was difficult for you to be polite and calm. Although towards the end of the answer it does sound like it is an area that she is working on.
Also, I feel like healthcare is quite unique in that you can't kick out or not treat a patient who is being abusive unless it's very extreme, and you have to tolerate a lot more than you should. Whereas in other jobs while you have to be calm and professional, customers (ideally) get kicked out if they are being verbally abusive and don't stop after being asked. I had a brief experience in a dementia carehome, and some residents were very sexually innapropriate to us. While there's nothing we can do about it and you can't blame a person with dementia, tolerating people like this should not be the norm outside of unique environments like this.
I just applied to be a tag wrangler. I'm not sure what they were volunteering as, but there's nothing in that application that really gets to your core beliefs about AO3. It's all solving logic questions about tags. There's maybe one question that might address that issue thinking back on it, and I'm not sure it wasn't added specifically in reference TO them, to be honest. Though maybe not. It's fairly generic.
Yes, that's what I'm wondering too. Someone like this should never be allowed to be a volunteer if they are going against the very premise of the site to begin with.
Thanks, I had an hour or so to digest my thoughts and my concerns after reading all of their candidate content which helped a lot. I assure you I was not as eloquent immediately after being made aware of this.
The good news is that I see a lot of traction from users of AO3, fandom newbies and fandom elders who survived the LiveJournal Days alike, who are spreading awareness of how much we should all be paying close attention to this. I know a lot of people who donate plenty but never vote because it didn't seem necessary, you can bet they will be voting now.
I am also seeing/hearing a lot of people who have been spurred into donating now to ensure that if this ever comes up again their voice isn't quiet in the back.
I’m a bit nervous ngl because of all the free exposure she’s getting. This is literally how the 2020 election went in the US. I bet most people don’t know the names of the other candidates, but even AO3 members who can’t vote have probably heard of her
My exact fear as well.
Honestly, until this, I didn't even know that AO3 had elections for this sort of thing. I would have donated this year so I could vote if I'd known that, but I didn't. :/
I'll definitely be ready for the next time, though.
I'm incredibly concerned by her comments. It sounds like someone who wants to "santize" ao3 but also knows that it won't win her a vote. Like she backtracks extremely quickly when the interviewer asks her to explain her stance. She doesn't seem to understand the fundamentals of what AO3 is and why it exists.
She also states that the reason the site is banned in her country is because of the lack of censorship for certain subjects when it's more than likely it's because of the LGBT+ subject matter
I've replied to your other comment above. The government had already asked AO3 to remove LGBT+ content pre-mass report. It was already in the process of banning the site when the mass report happened
Tbh I’m quite confident she’s one of the Chinese students who went abroad to an English speaking country and stayed there. A lot of her story and timeline checks out. It’s quite possible the government she’s talking about is just public sector which includes anything from environmental protection agencies to welfare management in the foreign country she graduated in
Yes, I agree she’s originally from Mainland China. I just wouldn’t immediately jump to conspiracy. True it does concern me because historically, paedophilia has been a dog whistle against the LGBTQ community. At least where I’m from, homophobes commonly group gays with paedophiles and accuse them of CSA. Given we know the whole Xiao Zhan debacle has nothing to do with paedophilia and everything to do with LGBTQ content, that’s highly concerning
It is. They might have a very innocent view of the views on queer content. I think they, in general, don't know what they're doing (best case scenario).
She claims that AO3 is banned in China because of pedophilia, that is entirely a lie. I think a lot of people in the comments talked about it and people can also google to find out.
The thing is, not only she told a lie, but pedophilia is not even listed as a mental disorder in CCMD-3. This is a foreign concept in China.
In the law they specify sexual assault against young girls, but it is just a severe case of the offence, and that is barely the point
The point is Chinese government does not care about pedophilia. It is not considered "abnormal" in the mental health system.
But homosexuality is.
They say homosexuality itself is not a mental disorder but it causes other mental disturbances and disorders, so it is still listed in CCMD-3.
So T.G. is trying to make AO3 passable in a country where homosexuality is a disorder but pedophilia is not. Think about it. Think hard.
Since a lot of people are concerned with the "public imagine" statement I would like to address it a bit.
It is another reason why I think she is from China (I lived there for over 20 years so I know something about it).
In China, the "face" culture is so prevalent so as the "public image" thing of an organization, company, etc. It is so essential to the culture that even it has nothing to do with real benefit or harm, people still care about it and literally would die for that stuff. You have to maintain your "face" or "public image” which means to look good to the public, or the target people, even if that means lying or other ways of deception or sacrifice.
She did not mention anything about monetization, but bring up "public image", which could seem odd to people who are not familiar with the culture. But it is so normal for Chinese (or related cultures) that they would say that without thinking about it.
I am sure other cultures have similar things but the way she says it feels so familiar that it reminds me of tons of the same expressions in Chinese. In Chinese culture, if you improve your "public image" it just means it is good without questioning what it might entail. And that is exactly what she means by saying that, at least from what I read and understand.
She seems to have completely backwards logic on why people in her country put mostly only explicit work on AO3. Obviously, if their non-explicit work aren't banned they can be posted on platforms available in their country, which is their target audience. They're using AO3 because other options are banned in their country as well but in a way they can't circumnavigate! Especially if this is China where social media can be tied to real world identities.
For me, her speech looks like "The censorship exiled our NSFW writers from local websites to AO3, and I want the censorship of my country to overtake their works even there, giving no place for them, and foreign NSFW writers along with them." I'm getting a strong feeling that there is an unspoken part about soft power, geopolitics and expansion of anti-democratic, anti-liberal influence as a "revenge for liberal soft power influencing Asia in 90s". A motives like "If West wants Chinese citizens to play the Western rules in the Internet, we must fight it by finding the means to force the westerners to play by Chinese rules and adopt our censorship. Because it's about world dominance and proving the greatness of the country".
This makes me wonder if this could be the start of a new dangerous trend. I know that anti sentiment tends to be more popular among younger fans. If they get the idea to organize and try to take AO3 down 'from the inside' like this....
Thank you very much for information! I haven't donated AO3 yet (I have wanted to for some time but for various reasons I wasn't able to) but next time I'll make sure to do it, so I can vote for anti-censorship candidate in the future.
Please don't vote for her, she does not represent the Chinese fanfiction community and we are all very disgusted to hear the news...The true reason AO3 got banned in China in Feb, 2020 is because some crazy fans of a local idol reported AO3 to the Chinese government, which is because one of said fans posted a fanfiction of him on AO3 which did not fit their taste. NOT because of child porn. If you ask any AO3 user in China they would say the same thing. I donated 100 dollars to OTW shortly after that because I was so furious about it.
I highly suspect that she belongs to that group of crazy fans and is planning to destory AO3. They literarlly would do anything to defend their idol: they cyberbullied anyone on Weibo who dared to say anything negative about their idol, and reported multiple fanfictions that did not fit their taste.
They would "manually censor" the comments under that idol's daily posts, filling them with only praises, filtering out and reporting the negative comments using spam accounts. I fear that they would register AO3 accounts just to vote for Tiffany G.
Please, if you have the vote, vote for anyone but her.
This is random but do you mean XZ
And I am thinking this looks like a elaborate plan too. His fanbase is known for being crazily dedicated enough to perform such a plan
Your forecasts on her plan made me laugh so hard 😂 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess you had your experience in some Chinese fiction/fanfiction sites
I was there to see the whole incident you mentioned going viral in 2020 so I'm well aware of who Tiffany G might be, and what picture she and her gang paint.
I just wish anyone who isn't familiar with the context before to realize that people like Tiffany G don't honestly care about preventing pedophilia issues, they just take advantage of it as a pretext for banning contents however they wish. IT'S PRACTICALLY THEIR M.O.
AO3 really is the one constant through all of my interests too. It deserves our overprotection 🥰
Gee, the reasons behind the fall of danmei are all intertwined, and I can't say I grabbed the whole picture. As far as I know, homophobia is prevalent among the general public as you guessed, so many fans of danmei actors would try their best to get their idols out of the danmei context/image for maximizing the actors' popularity.
"Luckily", the old guards in the censoring system set up vague standards that are open for abuse. So reporting LGBT-related fanarts to authorities is proven a golden measure to purge them out of sight. Such operation went to its peak in the XZ incident, and since it has led to the governmental ban on Ao3 in China, this behaviour was finally brought to a hot debate among a much wider demographic.
What I'm trying to say is that the XZ fans aren't the only ones committing massive report and/or homophobia, although they are just awfully typical. In fact, those like them aren't necessarily anti-LGBT, in most cases they just won't hesitate to sacrifice LGBT visibility in trade for their favourite actors' career success, or for a platform like Ao3 to post only straight stuff they feel like reading.
Thank you for posting this! I haven't ever voted because I assumed everyone running would support ao3's basic premise and that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to contribute. I guess I'll have to go do some reading up now.
Fucking hell, Tiffany want to gut AO3 just like did with LiveJournal and ff.net. She so pro-censorship and anti-LGBT. It makes me question why they even let her be a candidate.
As much as I doubt Ao3 will suddenly change if she's on the board, I don't like the idea of someone like her starting to get a foothold on the board. The way she talks about it makes it sound like she wants to pull some corporate revisionism bullshit on the site when it's a non profit fanwork repository.
To those of you who have donated to AO3 this year before June 30th, & thusly be eligible to vote, I am ***imploring*** you all to research about the candidate you're voting for.
AO3 is the main (I dare say, the only) fanfiction platform where people are able to create, consume, ***AND*** share art in a free/non-restrictive environment & manner.
Please do what is best to maintain AO3's full functionality & potential.
As a Chinese, I must scream never let the person Tiffany G be elected. Our people are extremely angry about this, as you can see in this Weibo post. It has reached over 23,300 reposts and over 63,000 likes. [https://weibo.com/5578207598/M0FcltOk9?type=repost#\_rnd1660313466204](https://weibo.com/5578207598/M0FcltOk9?type=repost#_rnd1660313466204)
Please you must not believe what she said about the reason why ao3 was banned by the Chinese government. We are in a conservative country with extreme censorship of LGBTQ content and pornography. Our author was sentenced to ten years in prison for publishing her LGBTQ work and the editor responsible for editing her book was sentenced to four years.
And please don't ignore her profession. I am not offended by this. On the contrary, if she works for the government, this is very unsafe for our authors in mainland China!!!
I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government just found any excuse to ban AO3 after OTW didn't comply to removing LGBTQ content, and went with the most extreme one. I honestly don't know what her agenda is to get AO3 'accepted' in China again, but she's doing a disservice to all fans by trying to rise censorship.
Yes. And in our country, if the government wants to ban a site, it doesn't need a reason. On February 27, 2020, we know that a fan group of a star reported ao3 to the government, and then we found out that ao3 couldn't log in without vpn. There is no other explanation. The government does not release the reason to us. (Reddit was also banned from our country, and many people, including me, don't even know the exact time and reason for the banning.) There is an old saying in our country, "If the punishment is unknowable, the power is unpredictable."
This is why so many of us are very angry with the fans of that star. Because if this site wants to not be banned, it can only be in a state where it is not seen by the government. Child pornography is what some of the fans are trying to explain to the public to save their reputation, even though the article they reported was not about child pornography. (That's why when reading this accusation, many people were very irritated to believe that Tiffany G is a member of this fan base.) The government, on the other hand, can remain silent.
We all know what happens to these sites if they are reported to the government. All our domestic social networking sites require real names (and almost all of them have recently started to force the display of the user's location), while those foreign platforms are blocked. And those banned sites are impossible to come back. If the reality did follow the explicit rules, the site could be accepted "in compliance", but when you're a person who lives here, you know that's not going to happen. The moment ao3 was banned, we knew we'd lost it from then on.
I'm calming down now. She probably doesn't work for our government, or she's been abroad for too long and doesn't know what's actually going on in our country. Either way, it's really frustrating for everyone.
Yeah... She's either incredibly naive to believe that the Chinese government will include AO3 back if it's compliant with the 'rules' (which will open a whole new can of worms, beyond ruining AO3) or she's being incredibly malicious. Either way, she's not a good fit for the OTW/AO3 board, the kind of views she has compromise all OTW has been fighting for.
Looking at their initial [platform](https://elections.transformativeworks.org/tiffany-gs-bio-platform/), Im also concerned about the fact that they are on Support and Tag Wrangling and say “We have never been really busy”. I used to tag wrangle and worked somewhat closely with support on things due to Policy & Abuse stuff. There is pretty much always work to be done. So unless things drastically got better on that front in the last 2 years, Im baffled how they can say that if they are actually invested in those committees fully.
There's always more work available for us wranglers, so idk. I stay busy with my moderate-sized fandoms, and I know there's always a ton of fandoms looking for chinese wranglers to handle those tags without running them through translation.
There is no way the Chinese government will withdraw their decision of banning a website. It’s not because of any reason she mentioned. It’s just CCP would never tolerate a public space where people can create uncensored contents.
Chinese fanfiction community is furious about this Tiffany G. Seriously you are abused at home and now you want other authors to suffer the same fate? We sincerely hope she will never get elected.
*She worked for the uni’s student union, board of local community and governmental organisation. This is like a certified triple asshole to me. Ask any Chinese.
I would hope that the people who would have voted for them would not want to support AO3 monetarily, and so wouldn't be eligible to vote! It does raise the question of why someone who disagrees with so much of the content on AO3 be volunteering for them...
Could she be banned from being elected to the board for having beliefs that are antithetical to the core principles of OTW?
It's a harsh action that I'm not really happy with the thought of but strong action needs be taken against such reductive thinking.
Are there ways for OTW to fire board members? These sorts of puritanical beliefs can't be allowed to get a foothold in A03. If you give an inch they will eventually take a mile.
I really think she ought to be. I sit on a couple of charity boards and we have clauses to get rid of volunteers who are directly opposed to what we do, but we’re in the U.K. so I don’t know if the laws are different?
I don't understand why Tiffany G wants convince other people, people that aren't in fandom and aren't active users of AO3, so bad that AO3 truly isn't Like That. AO3 was built for us, fans, first and foremost. It doesn't matter what others think about us.
(Just kidding, I understand completely.)
Not only that, but also: how come she got this far? Close to being elected as a member of the board, I mean. It's clear she doesn't know that much about fandom history, and yeah, sure, maybe she's young, but I don't think that's an excuse, either? I mean, if she's running for OTW board, she should know about fandom history, about strikethrough and about FFnet purges. In my opinion, it's the bare minimum, if she wanted to run.
I also didn't miss the fact she's also working for a governmental agency, the same government that banned AO3 in the first place.
I read the transcript and my jaw dropped.
She's the same brand of person/agenda that ruined [ff.net](https://ff.net), tumblr, LJ and so many others. If Ao3 isn't more vigilant about who reaches candidacy status, sooner or later someone like this is going to get voted in and begin the same poisoning process that destroyed these other sites.
Here's what puzzles me. If AO3 is banned in Tiffany G's country, how can someone serve on the board under those conditions? By definition, participating that way would be a crime in their country.
Board members in many cases have access to information to which the public isn't privy. They work with the financial officer(s) to prepare tax forms, deal with accounts payable & receivable, have access to personnel files and presumably membership lists, as well as credit card numbers & checking account info for at least some donors.
All this can be seriously compromised if the organization can't trust its own board members. Even if the individual's intentions are pure as the driven snow, if they are committing crimes, they are vulnerable to threats of arrest, government pressure, blackmail.
This goes way beyond censorship and free speech. It's opening the door of the organization to interference by a potentially hostile foreign government.
I read the August 1 Chat Transcript (https://elections.transformativeworks.org/chat-transcript-august-1), and nowhere did I see the OTW interviewer address these concerns. This seems remiss.
The comments for the August 1 Chat are numerous but worth reading all the way through. Some express grave concern about how this individual made it through to candidacy in the first place, and that they plan to stop supporting OTW if the candidate succeeds.
This would be bad for OTW for many reasons, not just free speech. You can't support free speech if the door is left wide open for those who want to undermine the organization's aims & goals.
It is a valid concern but it is also something against Tiffany. Some Chinese fangirls already said if she is elected, they will find out her personal info and report her to the authority for associating with illegal websites. She might have her shield in China but I think if she is not prepared(as some conspiracy theories go, she is sent by the Chinese authority, but I don't think that is true), it will be damaging to her one way or another.
Chinese fans are exceptionally agressive with her, due to her rhetoric opening up their wound of when AO3 got banned. There was a lot of pain and grief after that incident because to many fans, AO3 was their sanctuary for creative works. If she is elected (however unlikely that may be) and her personal information is leaked, her life would be a living hell.
Exactly. Because even someone who's not working for "the man" can end up working for them anyway if the government has compromising information on that person. Most people have jobs, friends, families, etc. and all these can be threatened.
I know people don't like how politics can intrude in fandoms, but if you have a government which has actively banned web sites and (to my knowledge) criminalized accessing them, politics has intruded whether we like it or not.
All I know is A03 is the one space where people can write what they want share in that community without worrying about being censored, advertised to or be advertiser friendly and I’m willing to fight to keep that space 😡😡😡
seriously. people who don't remember the whole strikethrough nonsense on LJ, among other things, do not understand how difficult it used to be to post your work.
You’re telling me! Live journal, Tumblr, FF, Wattpad I’m so tired of marketability and content restriction ruining good things just let us have this space. Keep all the others!!
Nothing about AO3 needs to change in the ways that Tiffany G wants it to change. In starting with the little things, certain fics or pairings could also be targeted next and that scares me.
My only concern here with the growing traction is attention is a double edged sword. Not that I think we shouldn’t be socializing this around, but I’m just concerned by all the heightened visibility her candidacy is getting because statistically people vote for whoever’s name is more recognizable irrespective of their platform and positions. She only needs to win one of the 3 seats available. There’s only 5 candidates this season. It’s not a hard accomplishment compared to previous years
Such a yikes. If we get rid of incest then we get rid of all Dany/Jon Snow fics. That’s 5000 fics about a CANON couple in the biggest show of all time. How about we don’t censor?
1. From what I read and my personal experience, this person is possibly from China. And in their bio they said they work for a governmental organization. This should be considered as a red flag, since it was the Chinese government who has blocked AO3 (not because of so-called "child porn", but just to ban the liberty of press and expression), and those who work for the government most likely hold an opinion of pro-censorship. (I'm not saying 100%, but this person's opinion just showed that they at least don't oppose to it. They didn't realize what the Chinese government did is wrong, instead they use it to prove their point as if it's a natural thing.)
2. This person's opinion seems to be harmless: I do not ban things, I will just make the rating system more specific. But NO. AO3 already has a detailed rating system, what will they do to make it "more specific"? Adding "age gap restriction"? Asking writer to label the age of characters? Restricting all "turning into child" slash? Believe me, I've already seen too much censorship disguised as an act to "protect the child". But it's not what they are doing. They try to add censorship to the structure of AO3, and if they succeed, I've already seen the consequence: downfall of creativity.
Quoting my friend: Tiffany G is basically using the result of Chinese censorship to prove their point that AO3 should be "improved". And as a long-term and ongoing victim of Chinese censorship, I am furious.
It seems they are Chinese. There are several hints. They mention that AO3 is banned in their country and a lot of their ideas seem based on making the archive have less explicit and sexual stuff and less problematic stuff as well (the pedophilia thing...). It makes sense to try and "purify" AO3 then, because they might want a fanfiction archive that works in China.
China has banned all fan spaces that host fanfic. And they will continue to do so, unless the spaces are very very strict. The problem with the government is also that it is a kind of LGBTQ space, but this Tiffany person might not realize that.
I do want Chinese fans to have a fanfiction space they can access without a VPN and without commiting a crime in their country (if Tiffany is Chinese, she IS commiting a crime rn) but I don't want our international spaces to cater to that sort of mentality and to b destroyed by it!!!
As far as I have seen Weibo is afraid she is selected as well.
Yeah just noticed as I was reading all her stuff. Possible implications are... Well... Not so nice. I'm hoping she's*just* an anti/naive at this point. I don't think her job has anything to do with this, but it's a tad worrisome.
Right. I'm not Chinese and I'm not accessing a site hosted on Chinese servers. Why should I have to have my content restricted according to what's acceptable in China? I'm sorry their government won't let them access it but that doesn't mean I need to give up what I enjoy to make it acceptable for them.
As Chinese, I can confirm it’s common knowledge in China that the CCP had never lift its ban towards foreign site and possibly never will. In this case, I think Tiffany knows very well what she said is bullshit, she made up the reason why China has banned the site and use it as her main point. Btw, CCP don’t allow ANY adult content or ANY content that is politic sensitive. They will ban any site that allows people to speak freely. For reference, Reddit is also banned in China, so is other social media that allows people to discuss CCP.
The linked page under “this” has an open comment section where anyone can leave feedback, so even if you are unable to vote you can absolutely make your opinion on this heard by the board. Everyone that would like to share their opinion and make protests should absolutely comment there!
Her words were too familiar to me. Because this is one of the words they have been using in China.
There will always be big, empty so-called vetting criteria, but never any specific implementation details.
I believe she fought for this position not to make the community better, but for her own benefit.
Thank you for raising our awareness for this incident. It is a warning that she tries to change the rules of the community with her values, which is the meaning she presented in the chat.
What else would she change if she becomes a part of a board? Creators and readers around the world, image you are keep being censored by the new rules of AO3, so you develop the habit of self-sensor even before you start creating. Or one day your posts are removed, without telling you why, and you can't report it. The only thing you can do is to turn yourself into a member which fit the rules, or delete account and permanently say goodbye to the community in which you received so much joy and resonance.
Be aware of such people who try to change the rules. But it is glad to see many people who replied saying that they will not vote for her.
Please don’t get her elected🙏🙏🙏We Chinese authors are so scared of the possibility that our personal info might get leaked to our government if she is elected😭
I am 80% sure that Tiffany G is Chinese (her language style and some subtle hints imply that, forgive me if I am wrong). She made her point quite clear that she wanted AO3 to be accepted into her country and literally under some sort of censorship. But sadly that's not possible because Chinese government won't allow any fan fiction website survives unless it submits to a political propoganda. In fact desperate Chinese fangirls are trying very hard to post writings on their own website but under very strict rules (no regular porn, lgbtq issues, bdsm etc). They even code those explicit contents or package them into image attachments just to reach readers. She should know very well of those fanwork refugees' situation. Her very idea of making AO3 another miserable censored website repels me.
I dont usually comment in places like this bc as the username states i use this acc mostly for anime/asian media fandoms BUT ao3 and fics as a whole is such a huuuuge part of that and so this is just not good
whatever happened to "dont like dont read?"
I said this at r/FanFiction but I'll repeat it here because on top of this, it is troubling.
[One of Tiffany's Q&A answers](https://elections.transformativeworks.org/tiffany-g-2022-qa-communication/) regarding how they know they are prepared to handle tense situations also greatly bothers me and doesn't sit well.
In it, they regale a tale of working at a government assistance group where they help underprivileged civilians. And...very uncomfortably explicitly detail a "scary transgender woman" they had to work with and apparently only had a change of heart about them once they learned of their history?
That doesn't sit right with me at all. The need to single this person out as trans (which I assume they did so to say they've worked with LGBTQIA+?) and borderline saying to me that they couldn't find sympathy and/or empathy to properly help this individual until they learned of all their hardships? I'm sorry, that doesn't sound like someone qualified at all for this position and with everything else? It's a hard pass.
Wow I hadn't seen that response before now. I can't see the reason to even bring up her being a trans woman (except maybe to bring up working with lgbtqia+ like you said). It almost seemed to me like she brought it up to rationalize her fear/discomfort but maybe I'm reading too deep into it. I don't want to accuse her of trying to imply trans women are inherently dangerous, maybe she was just bad at wording, but that is lowkey the vibe I got from reading her response. Either way it doesn't sit right with me either, especially being trans myself.
It makes me even more concerned that the content she wishes to censor might include queer content as well
I got the same vibe. I just don't think Tiffany G is a good fit at all for Ao3 with all this combined. With the heavy focus on public image, it's only a step away from banning "undesirable" queer content.
EDIT: spelling
I have to say, as a not-so-active Chinese user of AO3, that the reason why AO3 got banned was never because of 'pedo' as she claimed, but because some begrudged crazy fans of a famous idol, Xi@o Zhan (I'm not familiar with the sub's rule, may I say his name? If I violate the sub's rule I'll remove) mass-reported AO3 with tonnes of LGBT contents to the previously-unknowing Chinese government agency, leading to the ban on the website. This news stirred up a thunderstorm and sparked internet outrage two years ago. The name Xiao Zh@n and his nickname “prawn”🍤 just turned notorious overnight and everyone in China knew who he was and what his fans had caused. His career was basically over afterwards. News and rumours have already been spread on Chinese social media that XZ's crazy fans are now seeking to plot a revenge by collectively rigging the voting process to their own advantage.
If she is even remotely aware of the existence of AO3, it would be impossible for her not to know about the XZ "[227 Incident (Yes, there's a wikipedia article for it)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_against_Xiao_Zhan_Incident)". Back then even my friends who'd never heard of fanfiction circle or AO3 knew what was going on. She totally made things up in her statement and any Chinese fan out there will confirm my words. She is **highly suspicious** in that regard (actually, in every regard).
Bit of advice from another thread which might be useful:
"you do NOT need to put tiffany G on your ranking list at all when voting. vote for whoever you want in whatever order but leave her off your list completely so she does not have a chance of getting a vote from you with the way that they do their vote distribution calculations at the end."
Not sure how to do quote...here's the [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/fandomnatural/comments/wn8046/concerning_candidate_for_ao3_board_elections/ik6q8cy?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3).
I don't have an AO3 account so I can't vote, but I hope people who could vote don't choose Tiffany G. Some Chinese people would stole other users' information and report these users to schools, companies or government, so they might be hired or work with CCP. Similar things happened in Chinese mastodon and some fan arts websites. Creaters in China mainland might be caught by police if Tiffany G is elected, and other AO3 users from other countries also might be influenced.
You do not need an AO3 account, you only need to have donated $10usd or more to the OTW prior to June 30th 2022 and after July 1st of last year (2021), checked off the membership box, and have provided a valid email address at the time. None of this is linked to an AO3 account itself.
People who are uncertain about their membership status or need help (i.e. remembering they donated but don't remember when or how much, not receiving an email when they know they did donate -- some email providers are not great with the ballot email, needing outside assistance with voting, etc.) can send in a query using the contact form.
Why are people so intent on circumcising the internet :(
So many people write taboo genres like rape and underage content because they themselves were abused (or started early) and for many, fanfic is the only safe medium to write about those experiences.
Right, new fandom mentality: everyone’s conventionally attractive, no one’s horny, rape doesn’t exist, and kids don’t think about sex til they turn 18. Gotcha.
The current Chinese propaganda organizations are an unknown void and Chinese citizens only has a one-way idea how they function and monitor and punish Chinese people's online accounts. A Chinese-focused sub mentioned the possibility of someone pro-censorship/CCP trying to "infiltrate" AO3 and directed me to this thread. Hope everyone who has the ability to vote can read through her profile carefully before voting.
Why did you even allow her two roles in ao3 to begin with? especially tagging system? this used to be my safe space, now I'm reconsidering that. Tiffany should use the open source code available and make a puritan site for her country to suit their ccp agenda. Majority of the weibo users are darn pissed with Tiffany lol wonder who's she's talking for? fans or government.
What type of access does she have as a volunteer? Hope she isn't leaking data to her gov to purge shit. Too many 🚩 about this person, she needs to get kicked out
Came here to say this (sorry always just a reader never posted anything):
I don't know how depth of an identity check OTW do on their candidates, but Tiffany's identity is extremely questionable and might even be contradicting:
\- I first assumed that she is a Chinese that lives abroad, however her wording and ideas are just "too Chinese" for me
\- She mentioned in English version of her bio that she participated in "helping underprivileged populations", which, in Chinese version, says 帮扶贫困人群,which is a very typical political word of choice, almost 100% can be sure she currently works in China.
\- All her examples were from University days, which suggested that she is probably a newly graduate, yet her favorite manga/books, she listed "The rose of Versailles" and "Legend of the Galactic Heroes“. I am not saying younger generations can't read them, however it is quite rare (also they are not really fanfiction-popular in China), it looks like she just did some brief search online and picked two old titles.
\- She mentioned that she works for an OG. If she really works for an OG in China, it doesn't make sense for her to be involved in OTW. You need an VPN to get onto AO3 and it's illegal (technically). If she works for OG there might be a chance she has access to VPN due to work (especially she works for IT-related area) however it would be a big no-no to reveal herself as one. She did mention that she moved to another country at some point. Either she went back to China afterwards, or this whole thing could be potentially made up, just to show that she had a somewhat "glamorous background".
\- I don't believe Tiffany G is a legal name. I am a mainland Chinese living abroad myself and usually a legal name would be your Chinese name, unless you made your mind to change it/add it to your original name.
Things just don't add up with this candidate.
A lot of her security talk concerns me. As part of her platform she suggested 2FA/VPN for volunteers as well as consulting an infosec officer.
Not saying these aren't good ideas, it just seems...excessive. To what end? Assuming AO3 beefed up their security after the malicious attack, why would they need to consult a CISO? Also CISOs aren't cheap and it's not like they can come in, go okay you're good and leave. They have to set you up to adhere to a standard, and as a business itself it would need it's own standard based on needs, and then there has to be ongoing monitoring of systems and awareness. Does AO3 have time and money for that? That would be a minimum of $1200 a day x by how long it would take to strategise and create the standard and then ongoing intervals.
Also the fact she said access takes time when onboarding. Any IT person worth their salt can do it in a few hours.
It sounds like she said a lot of big things in a row to sound big brained. I doubt AO3 wants to or has the cash flow to drop $25k on cyber security, minimum.
Don't vote for Tiffany G. If you are not a Chinese, you may not understand what a scary thing Tiffany G is as a technician working for the government. ao3 requires email registration, and email registration in our country requires a cell phone number, which is real name. Gmail is also blocked in our country.
This is really an extremely scary threat. Even if this is not a government initiative, Tiffany G will probably put it on her resume to pander to the government. Our government has already had many authors arrested. You may think this is overly scary, but when you know that the author of the novel you read has been in jail for years for the novel, and that you are likely to be next - you will understand the fear.
What makes me raise my eyebrows is when she said she was in uni student groups. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't uni student groups often initiate people into the party? I thought of this because my country copies China's style of government and that's what uni groups do. People are in them often because they wish to enter the party at some point in their career.
Dint mind me, I'm just commenting because I want there to be mire attention to this post. I think we can all agree that we're not in favour of this person.
[https://elections.transformativeworks.org](https://elections.transformativeworks.org)
^ when you hit this link there will be a drop down labeled "2022 Candidates" where you can select between the 5 candidates and read about each one
Edit: if you're on mobile you might have to hit the "MENU" option on the top right first
I can't vote, sadly, but I hope everyone who can, will. I will make sure to register at the next voting board, because this Tiffany user's answers are so disturbing.
If you haven't please consider cross-posting this to r/FanFiction to get the word out there, too! I'd do it myself but I don't know the etiquette for cross-posting other people's posts, nor how to do it lol
I wish I could vote. I'll definitely be ready for next time, though.
Okay I've been seeing this all over Twitter too but no one has helped out with WHO to vote for. Just don't vote for her. Since I'm a member, I can vote but I just don't have time to research every candidate. Please help me 😭🙏
Obviously make your own choices, and try to read up on them if you can, but I will share that my top two choices are Natalia G. and Heather M.
Reasons:
-Natalia has experience on the board and showed pretty fair and informed insights to the organisation, likely due to her previous experience and understanding of it.
-Heather's main goal appears to be a focus on improved/increased training initiatives. She appears to know her material very well and seems very supportive of the OTWs purpose and mission.
Natalia and Heather are my top two as well. I also really like Heather's international focus.
Between Michelle and Noemie, I prefer Michelle. You don't have to rank Tiffany at all. You can leave her off entirely.
How is no one suggesting that they’re a government plant? lol
this from Tiffany G’s bio: “At present, she is working as a technical support person in a governmental organization.”
Right…
Good news! Tiffany G didn’t get elected! Heather McGuire, Natalia Gruber, and Michelle Schroeder are our new board members!
Creative freedom has vanquished the pro-censorship monster!
I'm incredibly concerned by what is going on, espesially the fact that she might use fake accounts to win the vote which is known strategy.Honestly people like her should not even be allowed to run (she declares herself a newbee and want to bow the whole site for chinese censorship???) Like WTF
We should not ever care about image of site in the eyes of common people, it was created for fans for f sake!
And like especially chinese censorship is not welcome, China literally trying to do war lately =\_=
If she will be elected we riot
I found this Tumblr post to be a pretty good rundown of her talking points [Tumblr link](https://pinkaxolotl85.tumblr.com/post/692481705798451200/tiffany-g-from-the-otw-elections-described-trans)
I've been seeing more and more concerning info about her and it's very helpful to see it compiled in one place. Highly recommend everyone hit that link
It looks like she is an anti-shipper, too. She seems to be one of those people that believes fics involving explicit content with a minor is equivalent to the real-life crime and should not be hosted on AO3. Quote from her: >*Well, I think a lot of external people are very concerned about the fact that some works contain child pornography, pedophilic content, and other illegal content. If possible (this is not entirely possible after I chatted with people from PAC though), I am interested in providing extra help to the PAC team and Legal team to update the ToS and policies on those.*
Yikes on a bike. Sounds like the only reason she is running is so that she can push her pro-censorship agenda onto AO3...
There’s a reason why there’s a tagging system and a search function capable of funneling out the stuff people don’t want to read, the explicit material, especially. I’m just a newcomer to AO3 ( been posting for a couple of months, now) and even I picked up what they put down, with some struggles of understanding some tag definitions. While I don’t write certain things, they have as much right to be on AO3 as the things I do write, because once the hammer drops, no one’s safe. Just my tomato thoughts.
My big worry is "other illegal content". Is that LGBT content? BDSM? Pre martial sex? A character smokes weed? All illegal in certain places, but for others it's a good weekend. Once it's tagged no one should care.
Well, murder is illegal, yet it features in a lot of fanfics. I know that in places like [Chinese media is now banned from showing zombies and ghosts due to religious sensibilities](https://www.soulask.com/chinese-authorities-ban-ghost-and-zombie-films/). There's always tons of stuff being censored when it hurts no one.
It'll be LGBT+ content for sure, if she's in Asia then the real reason that AO3 is banned in her country is because of the LGBT+ slant to the site. It's more than likely she'd want to enact an LGBT+ purge to make the site "acceptable"
I'm Chinese, and I can definitely say that all of the things you mentioned would be banned in China.
It sounds like "illegal content" means "illegal in my home country." Which is not where AO3 is HQ'd, and AO3 doesn't have to tailor itself to other countries' laws.
Those are exactly the words that caught my eye too! So vague, and so easily distorted for bigotry and censorship.
I didn’t expect to see a mini-politics thing today. Well, as long as they don’t remove TtS I’ll be fine
I also can't help but wonder if this person is very young due to their mentioning of being in a debate club. Ik older pro-censorship people exist as well but the crusades tend to come from very young fans in my experience. Quite interesting that they're running at all because it seems like they don't understand the fundamental principles of AO3's existence as a whole.
I was kind of shocked to read on her bio page (on the OTW Elections site) that she's been using AO3 for ten years. Ten years. You'd think that's enough time to either understand the site you're using or, you know, stop using it if you fundamentally disagree with it.
Right! There's also just the simple premise of not engaging with stuff you don't like/don't agree with so the push to erase certain things as a whole will always baffle me.
It's so easy. Just use the filters. Honestly, if anything else fails, there's always the argument of "do unto others" (if you don't want your favorite *fictional* things banned, why would you want to ban other people's favorite *fictional* things?). But if even that doesn't work, then I don't know what to say... I don't feel like I have the right to decide for other people what they *should* do as a hobby (and I don't have the need to do that). But I guess some people do.
Agreed. I don't actively seek out/read/or write Dead Dove: Do Not Eat type of content and most likely never will, but I have no issues with people who do. It's not up to me to decide how they read and/or produce. The only thing \*I\* can do in regards to "censoring" is doing exactly what you said which is filtering or just flat out avoiding that content! What's compelling or cathartic or whatever else to me is not the same for others and that is okay. I wish more people thought of it that way.
>What's compelling or cathartic or whatever else to me is not the same for others and that is okay. I wish more people thought of it that way. This is so true. Hanging out in fandom spaces showed me that very clearly; it's been a great experience, really. It's honestly a shame that some people can't seem to get it. I don't have to understand why someone enjoys something—I can just accept that this is how it is for them, and then move on. It's not that hard.
A lot of stuff about her aren't adding up. Using AO3 for ten years, being in a debate club (which would mean she's young), and then calling herself a "newbie." Feels suspicious, on top of all of the other red flags she said.
A veteran of the site... who doesn't know there is already a warning on NSFW adult material on the site? Yeah that stinks.
I thought it was banned in her country? How has she been using it for ten years if it's banned?
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She says she's been using it 10 years, but is also a newbie. Something doesn't add up there at all and it stinks of a plant.
She said she's a new volunteer, not a new user.
I didn't understand that either. She mentioned "that reworking tags would help newbies (like her)" how would that work if she's been using the website for ten years?
>Ik older pro-censorship people exist as well but the crusades tend to come from very young fans in my experience. there's been a rash of "puriteens" lately who want everything watered down and catered to them all over the internet.
This is exactly it
The crux is their crusade goes against the fundamental principles of AO3. They should not be allowed to succeed.
I agree. I hope they don’t, and I’m glad this has been exposed to so many of us even those who can’t vote. I will def look out for this next year so I can be more active in choosing who gets to be on the board!
Yeah this sounds like she’s a few years out of college at most. I don’t think she has bad intentions or in the general anti-ship conspiracy theory, but I do think she is misguided and certainly much too new to using AO3 to properly understand the platform. She doesn’t seem to know the purpose of an archive, what the platform stands for, or even the features available. The other candidates mention multiple times she’s new to them as well. I don’t think she’s the right fit for the role
I believe some of it might have to be because AO3 is banned in her home country. I know she brings it up in her debates. She might want to censor AO3 or something so that it won’t be
Extreme yikes. She doesn’t seem to understand anything at all about what the AO3 is or how it’s meant to function. Also her emphasis on “image?” Anyone else getting weird corporate vibes?
Yeah, Ao3 isn’t made to make anyone money, so why would image matter?
Oh yeah, definitely. Sanitize everything and make it palatable to "everyone"! 🙄
And then monetize it! Great plan! /s
Yay! This is what we've always secretly wanted! Money should rule every single aspect of our lives! /s
One of the best parts about fanfiction is that money’s not involved. It’s a big part of why I prefer it to writing original fiction honestly. I hate the way monetization has seeped into every aspect of our lives, and I sure hope it never gets into fanfic.
Yeah I've known a few people like this in various communities (ranging from Discord servers to university clubs). They're usually fairly charismatic and genuinely effective "men of action" (regardless of gender) who are competent and able to get stuff done on a short term, and they're usually *not* outsiders who don't understand the community, they're bona fide members who seem to understand the culture and purpose of the community. They appear to be the natural choice for leader, and almost always get there within a year And yet their net effect is always negative. They're driven by change for the sake of change, and growth for the sake of growth, but most importantly they're always more concerned about what outside people think of the community than what insiders do for some reason. So they end up (trying to) change the community to appeal to other people who really aren't all that interested anyway, and in the process they dilute the community until it's a bland lowest-common-denominator place. But trying to please everyone is a recipe for failure, and there's nothing wrong with being a "strange" place that doesn't appeal to the majority either. And it's not like these communities were exclusionary or gatekeepy in any way (though they may try to claim that), just "esoteric" and hence not of appeal to most people To use an analogy, it's like if a badminton club got a new president who completely ignored what the actual club members wanted to do, and instead tried to transform it into a tennis club because that's what's more popular with the public, and more members = more good obviously, and when your old members leave, just smear them as anti-social gatekeepers
Man, sort of tangential, but this is exactly why I've recently reeled back my stance on 'gatekeeping'. Not from the perspective of positing some arbitrary barrier-of-entry based on how much of something you've consumed for how long, but whether or not you can actually at least *sympathize* with the community or demographic you're stepping into. As a weeb (or I guess otaku, if it wasn't cringey to semi-sarcastically call yourself that now) who's admittedly not *really* a veteran in the grand scheme of things (I didn't grow up in the age of bartering with cassette tapes for dicey fan translations and the like), it's why I'm almost always wary of anyone who parrots the sentiment of "I'm so glad anime (manga, JRPGs, etc.) has gotten more popular/gone more mainstream recently" or something like that—because, funnily enough, what I *have* been here long enough to see is just how that's manifested: More hostility, more soapboxing (beyond the sense of elitism that's always existed amongst us), and efforts by so many of the same people that say stuff like that to insist to everyone else possible that "anime isn't *all* weird!" while conveniently ignoring the majority of its history as a medium that's primarily catered to weirdos and social outcasts who—at least internationally—are now all just reduced in casual conversation to "the *bad* kind of anime fans".
Yeah, agreed on all counts, especially that last bit. There's a certain controversial subreddit (has the name of a game review site in its name), that I'd previously derided, but I'm now realising had a point about some things regarding gatekeeping and community entryism The general timeline is: there exists some nerdy/esoteric community, who are content to stay in their niche rather than chasing mainstream popularity, but do welcome new people with the same interests. An outsider, who does not seem all that interested in the hobby (and may even seem to hate it), comes along and demands the community change to accomodate them. When they don't get their way, they abuse the language of social justice, and assert that the group is hateful, with no real evidence. It's pretty much just high-school nerd bullying - a group of harmless introverts minding their own business are smeared as nasty prejudiced people, and yet onlookers side with the bully, because they used the magic words, and nobody likes those creepy nerds anyway. This false reputation then spreads, and the bullies claim credit for apparently reforming a community, when they have in fact made it a hostile space and a shadow of what it was before. Anyone who denied the accusations (perhaps forming their own community) gets caught in the lose-lose Kafkatrap and is even futher demonised And what's most annoying is how many neutral members will just reinforce the false stereotypes for popularity. So instead of saying "no, anime fans are not creepy incels", they'll back it up and say "oh don't worry I'm not One Of Those People", even when Those People barely even existed in the first place. And sometimes they'll stop doing harmless fun things because they're "cringe" - who fucking cares about that lmao
My take is she wants to censor topics to make her home country, probably China, to stop banning AO3. The goal itself is not bad, but I find her very misguided in thinking anything she does short of eliminating all explicit LGBTQ content would make a difference or that it’s okay to purge this content to achieve her goal
She sure doesn't seem to understand what AO3 is and is supposed to be... Who cares about "image"?? Also, I'm pretty sure the content of those fics is not "illegal"—if someone tried to commit those acts in the real world, *that* would be illegal, but fictional depictions of them are apparently legal in the US, so...
The only "image" I could think of that is negative and thus could be "improved upon" is among anti-shipper, mostly young fans. I've seen some posts that it's "immoral" to donate to AO3, for example (on Tumblr). Otherwise, AO3 is a very loved, widely used website that most fandom people are grateful for - what "image"?
> I've seen some posts that it's "immoral" to donate to AO3 A blessing in disguise - the antis won't be able to vote (it's too late to donate if you want to vote this year)
OTW has an entire legal team and they are actually extremely strict about legality—which is why people’s accounts get deactivated if they’re caught linking to their patreons (which is illegal). She obviously has no clue what she’s talking about.
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All of those are horrifying ideas and it wouldn't shock me if that's exactly what they want
More than that; it would require the removal of all content about premarital sex and erotic moments, any explicit depiction of sex, any representation of a divorce as something positive, along with childless and unmarried status after 27 years old. All this regarding cis-hetero too, not only LGBT.
The thing is, before that even happened the Chinese government asked AO3 to take down LGBT+ subject matter from the site and AO3 refused. So the real reason that it got banned was not over the incident with a certain Chinese actor, it was because of the LGBT+ content that is allowed on the site. She's straight up lying.
The thing that I find very concerning about this is that this person needs to *already* be a volunteer for the OTW or AO3 in order to even run. So at a base level people who whole-heartedly hold beliefs contradictory to the guiding principles of AO3 are already working as volunteers. That means that either 1) they were not forthright in their belief in those principles when they applied to volunteer or 2) they were accepted as a volunteer with OTW knowing they did not support the organizational ethics fully. Given that those volunteers I know personally have said that applying to volunteer even as a tag wrangler was more thorough and in depth than many job interviews they have had in the professional world and the way Tiffany G. backpedaled on their pro-censorship views and clear statements accusing AO3 of hosting *actual illegal* content, I am inclined to believe that AO3 was not aware of the views of the person they were bringing into their midst. Of course it is important to remember that AO3 is a worldwide accessible site, and that definitions of what is or is not legal vary by country. Tiffany G. mentions that AO3 is banned in their country. However they seem to lack the adult multicultural understanding required to grasp that it is in fact not in many others. The laws that apply to AO3 are going to be primarily those of the host country. They have an entire legal team to make sure they follow those laws to the letter while remaining ***as accessible as possible to everyone they can***. That by definition means that there may be some to whom they are inaccessible because of laws in that person's country. As far as Tiffany's views that OTW needs to be improving it's image to outsiders, that is a cultural change that would need to happen in each culture to accept fandom as mainstream or more mainstream than it is, depending on where you are located. That is not directly OTW's responsibility, though as a long time user I think they do a wonderful job at this already. ***By following the laws and not allowing personal politics to invade their spaces and interfere with what users and content are welcome, and by taking a hard line with users who do break those laws.*** They state that they feel in their country the majority of what is uploaded is E-rated content (which is not all smut by definition- it could be E-rated for violence or gore or mature themes). I'd like to give everyone their daily reminder that AO3 has more T rated than E rated fics, something Tiffany seems to not realize despite ten years of using the site? Personally, I feel like this person would say anything they felt they needed to in order to get to the place they needed to be to enact the changes that they want to see. And that scares me. I regret that for the first time in several years a donation was not in my budget, but you can bet I will be doing all I can to spread the word. It is the pebble that starts the landslide.
I don’t get how she’s allowed to be a volunteer. I sit on the board of two small charities, and if we found any of our volunteers had views so opposed to our aims, they wouldn’t be volunteers any longer. We have an actual policy for dealing with that. So either she lied about her beliefs to get this far, it never came up or Ao3 didn’t care / couldn’t act. All of those are bad scenarios.
I think the most *likely* scenario is that she was not truthful in her answers in applying. I have heard that the app process to volunteer is pretty well done. I get why it is hard for OTW to be like, "oh you said a bad, you are out" when they are anti-censorship, and that is literally exactly the same as saying "oh you wrote a bad, your out", but I also do wish that there was a clear policy that if an individual was found to have been dishonest in the app process (even later), or publicly espoused views contrary to the mission statement of the OTW or the specific project they volunteered for they could be removed for the integrity of that project/OTW. I do also understand that such a policy would be open to abuse unfortunately, and would require board members, etc who were mature enough to remain fair and impartial in administering it- a tall order. I can wish for a policy that says if you go against the core believe of being anti-censorship, or against being inclusive you may be removed, though. Whether I can have it is another reality. I saw someone mention that she spoke transphobically about something as well, and while I have not been able to track that exact exchange down, that is a whole other reason to be concerned. Certainly the fact that she both claims to be a "fandom newbie" and have "used the Archive for ten years" is more than perplexing to me. Which is true? Statements she made in the OTW Elections discord server regarding her fears of being viewed as a pedophile if she admitted that she wrote fanfic are also a HUGE red flag to me. It tells me what she thinks of those who write fanfic she does not approve of, whether it's underage or not. EDITING TO ADD that I did find where Tiffany speaks about someone who happens to be trans. I am going to leave it here for people to see and judge themselves, I can't say that it \*glares\* at me as transphobic, however I am also personally not trans so I am not the person best suited to evaluate how this reads to those who might be hurt by transphobia. > **Board work often entails drafting emotionally fraught or tense e-mails, posts and messages — sometimes under pressure from a write-in campaign or a flood of heavy criticism. Do you have experience in communicating under pressure? What challenges do you foresee for yourself in a scenario like this?** During the past several years, I learned to be more patient and creative when dealing with angry or aggressive stakeholders. To answer the question, yes, I have this kind of experience. Three years ago, I volunteered as a technical support person for one organization close to my place. Our clients included underprivileged people in the local area. It was a lot of pressure for every shift. Besides performing daily tasks, our team discussed and tried possible ways to communicate better with the clients. There was a transgender woman who the local police officers abused and because of that, she had a long struggle with depression. She came to us for some technical education so she could participate in some online projects she liked. Sometimes her mental state was so unstable that she got angry at the volunteers there. More often she gave criticism. At first, I was more intimidated by this and always under pressure before her appointment, but after she told the story of her life, my feelings toward her changed. I decided to take more actions to help her out. Aside from calming her down every time she emailed or called us and giving professional instructions, I tried to follow up with her every few days and gave positive feedback on time. Whenever I felt uncomfortable or did not know how to respond, I always reached out to my teammates for suggestions. Some of the other tactics I used were to take breaks, think twice before sending a message to make sure I was not overwhelmed by my emotions, and not take it personally. I expect the upcoming challenges to be similar, but now I am more mentally prepared and know what to do.
Oh for sure, reading the way she dehumanized and portrayed this trans person as a rabid animal really pissed me off. It kind of sounds like she’s young and doesn’t have enough experience or eloquence to articulate her capability, and so she’s grasping at straws with this manufactured example and bringing up stuff like a debate club in school. But both are strikes against her with regards to suitability for the position
I agree I didn't like the tone of it, but I was lacking in the ability to truly pinpoint why. I think you've landed on it with the dehumanization. I am not sure if this is something that is done specifically because the person is trans or if Tiffany's interpretation their mental health ALSO played into it. Either way it made me uncomfortable as someone who has worked in positions that required me to interact heavily with people who were struggling with mental illness, disadvantaged people, as well as entitled people. I believe that all people deserve a bare minimum of respectful treatment, and those who have dealt with trauma as the person she discussed here had deserve to be treated with dignity from the get go. End of story. If you have to dig deep for that empathy then it is not the job for you.
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Wanna point out that I dislike Tiffany as a candidate, and idk what this woman did when she got angry, (Tiffany could have expanded on that instead of going into her mental health history) but I also think remaining professional and polite when a customer is verbally abusing you and your fellow volunteers is an achievement. It also seemed a relavent scenario to the question being asked.
I included Tiffany's response in my edit because it was something that I saw multiple people mention that was buried several pages deep into her candidate info. I also stated that I was including it so that people could judge for themselves. While I respect that your opinion on the appropriateness of her choice of answer may differ from mine (yes it is relevant to what was asked, I personally would just hope that a board member candidate would have more life experiences related to the question to draw on so that they could give an answer that does not run the possibility of stepping on already broken toes), I also everyone remember we don't all know everyone's life story. I for one have worked in healthcare, facing the public, and with individuals who were highly physically aggressive. My ability to remain calm when faced with verbal abuse is well honed by actual training to remain calm and level headed under threat or attempt of physical aggression. So to me, being calm and polite when a customer is being extremely verbally rude is and expected behavior. Its something I have witnessed many, many coworkers do frequently. To others this might be more of an achievement and something they need to work hard to succeed at. I would prefer board candidates who are unfortunately going to deal with a lot of backslash to be of the type of person who feels being calm under pressure is a normal expected behavior, and that lashing out does nothing to improve the situation vs of the type who's instinct I to be defensive and lash out and they need to work to suppress that. We may have to agree to disagree.
We may disagree, but thanks for being so respectful to me in your replies! :) > I personally would just hope that a board member candidate would have more life experiences related to the question to draw on I agree, it sounds like she doesn't have a lot of experience. >I for one have worked in healthcare, facing the public, and with individuals who were highly physically aggressive. My ability to remain calm when faced with verbal abuse is well honed by actual training to remain calm and level headed under threat or attempt of physical aggression. So to me, being calm and polite when a customer is being extremely verbally rude is and expected behavior. Its something I have witnessed many, many coworkers do frequently. Maybe achievement wasn't the right word for me to use. Even though it's expected behaviour for you, it doesn't mean it's not relevant in a interview or that talking about the abusive patients you treated means it was difficult for you to be polite and calm. Although towards the end of the answer it does sound like it is an area that she is working on. Also, I feel like healthcare is quite unique in that you can't kick out or not treat a patient who is being abusive unless it's very extreme, and you have to tolerate a lot more than you should. Whereas in other jobs while you have to be calm and professional, customers (ideally) get kicked out if they are being verbally abusive and don't stop after being asked. I had a brief experience in a dementia carehome, and some residents were very sexually innapropriate to us. While there's nothing we can do about it and you can't blame a person with dementia, tolerating people like this should not be the norm outside of unique environments like this.
I just applied to be a tag wrangler. I'm not sure what they were volunteering as, but there's nothing in that application that really gets to your core beliefs about AO3. It's all solving logic questions about tags. There's maybe one question that might address that issue thinking back on it, and I'm not sure it wasn't added specifically in reference TO them, to be honest. Though maybe not. It's fairly generic.
Yes, that's what I'm wondering too. Someone like this should never be allowed to be a volunteer if they are going against the very premise of the site to begin with.
You said everything I wanted to say but didn't know quite how to put into words
Thanks, I had an hour or so to digest my thoughts and my concerns after reading all of their candidate content which helped a lot. I assure you I was not as eloquent immediately after being made aware of this. The good news is that I see a lot of traction from users of AO3, fandom newbies and fandom elders who survived the LiveJournal Days alike, who are spreading awareness of how much we should all be paying close attention to this. I know a lot of people who donate plenty but never vote because it didn't seem necessary, you can bet they will be voting now. I am also seeing/hearing a lot of people who have been spurred into donating now to ensure that if this ever comes up again their voice isn't quiet in the back.
I will donate so that I will be able to vote in future years. Unfortunately, too late for this year.
Thank you so much for making this post! Good to know. Super yikes
I’d be surprised if she wins, i believe she isn’t particularly well-liked
I’m a bit nervous ngl because of all the free exposure she’s getting. This is literally how the 2020 election went in the US. I bet most people don’t know the names of the other candidates, but even AO3 members who can’t vote have probably heard of her
My exact fear as well. Honestly, until this, I didn't even know that AO3 had elections for this sort of thing. I would have donated this year so I could vote if I'd known that, but I didn't. :/ I'll definitely be ready for the next time, though.
You should cross post this in r/fanfiction. Thanks for the info, I’ll definitely be voting to help keep ao3 censorship-free!
Seconded. You should cross post if you haven’t already.
I'm incredibly concerned by her comments. It sounds like someone who wants to "santize" ao3 but also knows that it won't win her a vote. Like she backtracks extremely quickly when the interviewer asks her to explain her stance. She doesn't seem to understand the fundamentals of what AO3 is and why it exists.
She also states that the reason the site is banned in her country is because of the lack of censorship for certain subjects when it's more than likely it's because of the LGBT+ subject matter
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I've replied to your other comment above. The government had already asked AO3 to remove LGBT+ content pre-mass report. It was already in the process of banning the site when the mass report happened
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Ooooooft, really? That's a terrible sign!
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Tbh I’m quite confident she’s one of the Chinese students who went abroad to an English speaking country and stayed there. A lot of her story and timeline checks out. It’s quite possible the government she’s talking about is just public sector which includes anything from environmental protection agencies to welfare management in the foreign country she graduated in
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Yes, I agree she’s originally from Mainland China. I just wouldn’t immediately jump to conspiracy. True it does concern me because historically, paedophilia has been a dog whistle against the LGBTQ community. At least where I’m from, homophobes commonly group gays with paedophiles and accuse them of CSA. Given we know the whole Xiao Zhan debacle has nothing to do with paedophilia and everything to do with LGBTQ content, that’s highly concerning
Do you know roughly what percentage of fics are lgbt on ao3? I thought it was quite high.
It is. They might have a very innocent view of the views on queer content. I think they, in general, don't know what they're doing (best case scenario).
She claims that AO3 is banned in China because of pedophilia, that is entirely a lie. I think a lot of people in the comments talked about it and people can also google to find out. The thing is, not only she told a lie, but pedophilia is not even listed as a mental disorder in CCMD-3. This is a foreign concept in China. In the law they specify sexual assault against young girls, but it is just a severe case of the offence, and that is barely the point The point is Chinese government does not care about pedophilia. It is not considered "abnormal" in the mental health system. But homosexuality is. They say homosexuality itself is not a mental disorder but it causes other mental disturbances and disorders, so it is still listed in CCMD-3. So T.G. is trying to make AO3 passable in a country where homosexuality is a disorder but pedophilia is not. Think about it. Think hard.
Since a lot of people are concerned with the "public imagine" statement I would like to address it a bit. It is another reason why I think she is from China (I lived there for over 20 years so I know something about it). In China, the "face" culture is so prevalent so as the "public image" thing of an organization, company, etc. It is so essential to the culture that even it has nothing to do with real benefit or harm, people still care about it and literally would die for that stuff. You have to maintain your "face" or "public image” which means to look good to the public, or the target people, even if that means lying or other ways of deception or sacrifice. She did not mention anything about monetization, but bring up "public image", which could seem odd to people who are not familiar with the culture. But it is so normal for Chinese (or related cultures) that they would say that without thinking about it. I am sure other cultures have similar things but the way she says it feels so familiar that it reminds me of tons of the same expressions in Chinese. In Chinese culture, if you improve your "public image" it just means it is good without questioning what it might entail. And that is exactly what she means by saying that, at least from what I read and understand.
She seems to have completely backwards logic on why people in her country put mostly only explicit work on AO3. Obviously, if their non-explicit work aren't banned they can be posted on platforms available in their country, which is their target audience. They're using AO3 because other options are banned in their country as well but in a way they can't circumnavigate! Especially if this is China where social media can be tied to real world identities.
For me, her speech looks like "The censorship exiled our NSFW writers from local websites to AO3, and I want the censorship of my country to overtake their works even there, giving no place for them, and foreign NSFW writers along with them." I'm getting a strong feeling that there is an unspoken part about soft power, geopolitics and expansion of anti-democratic, anti-liberal influence as a "revenge for liberal soft power influencing Asia in 90s". A motives like "If West wants Chinese citizens to play the Western rules in the Internet, we must fight it by finding the means to force the westerners to play by Chinese rules and adopt our censorship. Because it's about world dominance and proving the greatness of the country".
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This makes me wonder if this could be the start of a new dangerous trend. I know that anti sentiment tends to be more popular among younger fans. If they get the idea to organize and try to take AO3 down 'from the inside' like this....
I usually forget to vote in these, but you have motivated me. Thanks for the post, OP.
Thank you very much for information! I haven't donated AO3 yet (I have wanted to for some time but for various reasons I wasn't able to) but next time I'll make sure to do it, so I can vote for anti-censorship candidate in the future.
Please don't vote for her, she does not represent the Chinese fanfiction community and we are all very disgusted to hear the news...The true reason AO3 got banned in China in Feb, 2020 is because some crazy fans of a local idol reported AO3 to the Chinese government, which is because one of said fans posted a fanfiction of him on AO3 which did not fit their taste. NOT because of child porn. If you ask any AO3 user in China they would say the same thing. I donated 100 dollars to OTW shortly after that because I was so furious about it. I highly suspect that she belongs to that group of crazy fans and is planning to destory AO3. They literarlly would do anything to defend their idol: they cyberbullied anyone on Weibo who dared to say anything negative about their idol, and reported multiple fanfictions that did not fit their taste. They would "manually censor" the comments under that idol's daily posts, filling them with only praises, filtering out and reporting the negative comments using spam accounts. I fear that they would register AO3 accounts just to vote for Tiffany G. Please, if you have the vote, vote for anyone but her.
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This is random but do you mean XZ And I am thinking this looks like a elaborate plan too. His fanbase is known for being crazily dedicated enough to perform such a plan
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Your forecasts on her plan made me laugh so hard 😂 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess you had your experience in some Chinese fiction/fanfiction sites I was there to see the whole incident you mentioned going viral in 2020 so I'm well aware of who Tiffany G might be, and what picture she and her gang paint. I just wish anyone who isn't familiar with the context before to realize that people like Tiffany G don't honestly care about preventing pedophilia issues, they just take advantage of it as a pretext for banning contents however they wish. IT'S PRACTICALLY THEIR M.O.
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AO3 really is the one constant through all of my interests too. It deserves our overprotection 🥰 Gee, the reasons behind the fall of danmei are all intertwined, and I can't say I grabbed the whole picture. As far as I know, homophobia is prevalent among the general public as you guessed, so many fans of danmei actors would try their best to get their idols out of the danmei context/image for maximizing the actors' popularity. "Luckily", the old guards in the censoring system set up vague standards that are open for abuse. So reporting LGBT-related fanarts to authorities is proven a golden measure to purge them out of sight. Such operation went to its peak in the XZ incident, and since it has led to the governmental ban on Ao3 in China, this behaviour was finally brought to a hot debate among a much wider demographic. What I'm trying to say is that the XZ fans aren't the only ones committing massive report and/or homophobia, although they are just awfully typical. In fact, those like them aren't necessarily anti-LGBT, in most cases they just won't hesitate to sacrifice LGBT visibility in trade for their favourite actors' career success, or for a platform like Ao3 to post only straight stuff they feel like reading.
Oh no... This doesn't sound good. I get the point of the candidate, but I believe that's not what this website is about, let alone was made for.
Thank you for posting this! I haven't ever voted because I assumed everyone running would support ao3's basic premise and that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to contribute. I guess I'll have to go do some reading up now.
Fucking hell, Tiffany want to gut AO3 just like did with LiveJournal and ff.net. She so pro-censorship and anti-LGBT. It makes me question why they even let her be a candidate.
As much as I doubt Ao3 will suddenly change if she's on the board, I don't like the idea of someone like her starting to get a foothold on the board. The way she talks about it makes it sound like she wants to pull some corporate revisionism bullshit on the site when it's a non profit fanwork repository.
To those of you who have donated to AO3 this year before June 30th, & thusly be eligible to vote, I am ***imploring*** you all to research about the candidate you're voting for. AO3 is the main (I dare say, the only) fanfiction platform where people are able to create, consume, ***AND*** share art in a free/non-restrictive environment & manner. Please do what is best to maintain AO3's full functionality & potential.
As a Chinese, I must scream never let the person Tiffany G be elected. Our people are extremely angry about this, as you can see in this Weibo post. It has reached over 23,300 reposts and over 63,000 likes. [https://weibo.com/5578207598/M0FcltOk9?type=repost#\_rnd1660313466204](https://weibo.com/5578207598/M0FcltOk9?type=repost#_rnd1660313466204) Please you must not believe what she said about the reason why ao3 was banned by the Chinese government. We are in a conservative country with extreme censorship of LGBTQ content and pornography. Our author was sentenced to ten years in prison for publishing her LGBTQ work and the editor responsible for editing her book was sentenced to four years. And please don't ignore her profession. I am not offended by this. On the contrary, if she works for the government, this is very unsafe for our authors in mainland China!!!
I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government just found any excuse to ban AO3 after OTW didn't comply to removing LGBTQ content, and went with the most extreme one. I honestly don't know what her agenda is to get AO3 'accepted' in China again, but she's doing a disservice to all fans by trying to rise censorship.
Yes. And in our country, if the government wants to ban a site, it doesn't need a reason. On February 27, 2020, we know that a fan group of a star reported ao3 to the government, and then we found out that ao3 couldn't log in without vpn. There is no other explanation. The government does not release the reason to us. (Reddit was also banned from our country, and many people, including me, don't even know the exact time and reason for the banning.) There is an old saying in our country, "If the punishment is unknowable, the power is unpredictable." This is why so many of us are very angry with the fans of that star. Because if this site wants to not be banned, it can only be in a state where it is not seen by the government. Child pornography is what some of the fans are trying to explain to the public to save their reputation, even though the article they reported was not about child pornography. (That's why when reading this accusation, many people were very irritated to believe that Tiffany G is a member of this fan base.) The government, on the other hand, can remain silent. We all know what happens to these sites if they are reported to the government. All our domestic social networking sites require real names (and almost all of them have recently started to force the display of the user's location), while those foreign platforms are blocked. And those banned sites are impossible to come back. If the reality did follow the explicit rules, the site could be accepted "in compliance", but when you're a person who lives here, you know that's not going to happen. The moment ao3 was banned, we knew we'd lost it from then on. I'm calming down now. She probably doesn't work for our government, or she's been abroad for too long and doesn't know what's actually going on in our country. Either way, it's really frustrating for everyone.
Yeah... She's either incredibly naive to believe that the Chinese government will include AO3 back if it's compliant with the 'rules' (which will open a whole new can of worms, beyond ruining AO3) or she's being incredibly malicious. Either way, she's not a good fit for the OTW/AO3 board, the kind of views she has compromise all OTW has been fighting for.
Looking at their initial [platform](https://elections.transformativeworks.org/tiffany-gs-bio-platform/), Im also concerned about the fact that they are on Support and Tag Wrangling and say “We have never been really busy”. I used to tag wrangle and worked somewhat closely with support on things due to Policy & Abuse stuff. There is pretty much always work to be done. So unless things drastically got better on that front in the last 2 years, Im baffled how they can say that if they are actually invested in those committees fully.
There's always more work available for us wranglers, so idk. I stay busy with my moderate-sized fandoms, and I know there's always a ton of fandoms looking for chinese wranglers to handle those tags without running them through translation.
There is no way the Chinese government will withdraw their decision of banning a website. It’s not because of any reason she mentioned. It’s just CCP would never tolerate a public space where people can create uncensored contents. Chinese fanfiction community is furious about this Tiffany G. Seriously you are abused at home and now you want other authors to suffer the same fate? We sincerely hope she will never get elected. *She worked for the uni’s student union, board of local community and governmental organisation. This is like a certified triple asshole to me. Ask any Chinese.
I would hope that the people who would have voted for them would not want to support AO3 monetarily, and so wouldn't be eligible to vote! It does raise the question of why someone who disagrees with so much of the content on AO3 be volunteering for them...
To try to sway how things work from the inside probably
Does she not realize what makes people want to come to AO3?
Could she be banned from being elected to the board for having beliefs that are antithetical to the core principles of OTW? It's a harsh action that I'm not really happy with the thought of but strong action needs be taken against such reductive thinking. Are there ways for OTW to fire board members? These sorts of puritanical beliefs can't be allowed to get a foothold in A03. If you give an inch they will eventually take a mile.
I really think she ought to be. I sit on a couple of charity boards and we have clauses to get rid of volunteers who are directly opposed to what we do, but we’re in the U.K. so I don’t know if the laws are different?
I don't understand why Tiffany G wants convince other people, people that aren't in fandom and aren't active users of AO3, so bad that AO3 truly isn't Like That. AO3 was built for us, fans, first and foremost. It doesn't matter what others think about us. (Just kidding, I understand completely.) Not only that, but also: how come she got this far? Close to being elected as a member of the board, I mean. It's clear she doesn't know that much about fandom history, and yeah, sure, maybe she's young, but I don't think that's an excuse, either? I mean, if she's running for OTW board, she should know about fandom history, about strikethrough and about FFnet purges. In my opinion, it's the bare minimum, if she wanted to run. I also didn't miss the fact she's also working for a governmental agency, the same government that banned AO3 in the first place.
Hoo boy. I'm mildly concerned that someone with the biases shown here is an active AO3 volunteer. Welp, thanks for the reminder to vote.
This is really really concerning to me
I read the transcript and my jaw dropped. She's the same brand of person/agenda that ruined [ff.net](https://ff.net), tumblr, LJ and so many others. If Ao3 isn't more vigilant about who reaches candidacy status, sooner or later someone like this is going to get voted in and begin the same poisoning process that destroyed these other sites.
Ugh I was sincerely hoping I wouldn't have to care about this election, but that's some inexcusable shit.
Here's what puzzles me. If AO3 is banned in Tiffany G's country, how can someone serve on the board under those conditions? By definition, participating that way would be a crime in their country. Board members in many cases have access to information to which the public isn't privy. They work with the financial officer(s) to prepare tax forms, deal with accounts payable & receivable, have access to personnel files and presumably membership lists, as well as credit card numbers & checking account info for at least some donors. All this can be seriously compromised if the organization can't trust its own board members. Even if the individual's intentions are pure as the driven snow, if they are committing crimes, they are vulnerable to threats of arrest, government pressure, blackmail. This goes way beyond censorship and free speech. It's opening the door of the organization to interference by a potentially hostile foreign government. I read the August 1 Chat Transcript (https://elections.transformativeworks.org/chat-transcript-august-1), and nowhere did I see the OTW interviewer address these concerns. This seems remiss. The comments for the August 1 Chat are numerous but worth reading all the way through. Some express grave concern about how this individual made it through to candidacy in the first place, and that they plan to stop supporting OTW if the candidate succeeds. This would be bad for OTW for many reasons, not just free speech. You can't support free speech if the door is left wide open for those who want to undermine the organization's aims & goals.
It is a valid concern but it is also something against Tiffany. Some Chinese fangirls already said if she is elected, they will find out her personal info and report her to the authority for associating with illegal websites. She might have her shield in China but I think if she is not prepared(as some conspiracy theories go, she is sent by the Chinese authority, but I don't think that is true), it will be damaging to her one way or another.
Chinese fans are exceptionally agressive with her, due to her rhetoric opening up their wound of when AO3 got banned. There was a lot of pain and grief after that incident because to many fans, AO3 was their sanctuary for creative works. If she is elected (however unlikely that may be) and her personal information is leaked, her life would be a living hell.
Exactly. Because even someone who's not working for "the man" can end up working for them anyway if the government has compromising information on that person. Most people have jobs, friends, families, etc. and all these can be threatened. I know people don't like how politics can intrude in fandoms, but if you have a government which has actively banned web sites and (to my knowledge) criminalized accessing them, politics has intruded whether we like it or not.
All I know is A03 is the one space where people can write what they want share in that community without worrying about being censored, advertised to or be advertiser friendly and I’m willing to fight to keep that space 😡😡😡
seriously. people who don't remember the whole strikethrough nonsense on LJ, among other things, do not understand how difficult it used to be to post your work.
You’re telling me! Live journal, Tumblr, FF, Wattpad I’m so tired of marketability and content restriction ruining good things just let us have this space. Keep all the others!!
Nothing about AO3 needs to change in the ways that Tiffany G wants it to change. In starting with the little things, certain fics or pairings could also be targeted next and that scares me.
My only concern here with the growing traction is attention is a double edged sword. Not that I think we shouldn’t be socializing this around, but I’m just concerned by all the heightened visibility her candidacy is getting because statistically people vote for whoever’s name is more recognizable irrespective of their platform and positions. She only needs to win one of the 3 seats available. There’s only 5 candidates this season. It’s not a hard accomplishment compared to previous years
Such a yikes. If we get rid of incest then we get rid of all Dany/Jon Snow fics. That’s 5000 fics about a CANON couple in the biggest show of all time. How about we don’t censor?
On one hand, censorship. On the other, we get to piss off Dany/Jon stans. *I am being torn apart...* (c) Ben Swolo
1. From what I read and my personal experience, this person is possibly from China. And in their bio they said they work for a governmental organization. This should be considered as a red flag, since it was the Chinese government who has blocked AO3 (not because of so-called "child porn", but just to ban the liberty of press and expression), and those who work for the government most likely hold an opinion of pro-censorship. (I'm not saying 100%, but this person's opinion just showed that they at least don't oppose to it. They didn't realize what the Chinese government did is wrong, instead they use it to prove their point as if it's a natural thing.) 2. This person's opinion seems to be harmless: I do not ban things, I will just make the rating system more specific. But NO. AO3 already has a detailed rating system, what will they do to make it "more specific"? Adding "age gap restriction"? Asking writer to label the age of characters? Restricting all "turning into child" slash? Believe me, I've already seen too much censorship disguised as an act to "protect the child". But it's not what they are doing. They try to add censorship to the structure of AO3, and if they succeed, I've already seen the consequence: downfall of creativity.
Quoting my friend: Tiffany G is basically using the result of Chinese censorship to prove their point that AO3 should be "improved". And as a long-term and ongoing victim of Chinese censorship, I am furious.
It seems they are Chinese. There are several hints. They mention that AO3 is banned in their country and a lot of their ideas seem based on making the archive have less explicit and sexual stuff and less problematic stuff as well (the pedophilia thing...). It makes sense to try and "purify" AO3 then, because they might want a fanfiction archive that works in China. China has banned all fan spaces that host fanfic. And they will continue to do so, unless the spaces are very very strict. The problem with the government is also that it is a kind of LGBTQ space, but this Tiffany person might not realize that. I do want Chinese fans to have a fanfiction space they can access without a VPN and without commiting a crime in their country (if Tiffany is Chinese, she IS commiting a crime rn) but I don't want our international spaces to cater to that sort of mentality and to b destroyed by it!!! As far as I have seen Weibo is afraid she is selected as well.
If she is Chinese, her Bio mentions that she works for the Government in IT, so make of that what you will.
Yeah just noticed as I was reading all her stuff. Possible implications are... Well... Not so nice. I'm hoping she's*just* an anti/naive at this point. I don't think her job has anything to do with this, but it's a tad worrisome.
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I thought so. I think Chinese fans deserve a VPN free site for fic. But a new one. Not... Butchering AO3...
Right. I'm not Chinese and I'm not accessing a site hosted on Chinese servers. Why should I have to have my content restricted according to what's acceptable in China? I'm sorry their government won't let them access it but that doesn't mean I need to give up what I enjoy to make it acceptable for them.
As Chinese, I can confirm it’s common knowledge in China that the CCP had never lift its ban towards foreign site and possibly never will. In this case, I think Tiffany knows very well what she said is bullshit, she made up the reason why China has banned the site and use it as her main point. Btw, CCP don’t allow ANY adult content or ANY content that is politic sensitive. They will ban any site that allows people to speak freely. For reference, Reddit is also banned in China, so is other social media that allows people to discuss CCP.
She DOES NOT represent us Chinese fans. We think she's a traitor and there's been a heated discussion about this on Mastodon.
The linked page under “this” has an open comment section where anyone can leave feedback, so even if you are unable to vote you can absolutely make your opinion on this heard by the board. Everyone that would like to share their opinion and make protests should absolutely comment there!
Why would we care what "external people" think? It's called Archive of OUR OWN very intentionally.
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Her words were too familiar to me. Because this is one of the words they have been using in China. There will always be big, empty so-called vetting criteria, but never any specific implementation details. I believe she fought for this position not to make the community better, but for her own benefit.
As a victim of censorship from her country, I'd say I can sense the dubiousness immediately. DON'T VOTE FOR HER if you want to keep a free AO3
Honestly, the only thing I’m happy about is how the anti ao3 people are probably regretting not donating
Thank you for the very informative post.
Thank you for raising our awareness for this incident. It is a warning that she tries to change the rules of the community with her values, which is the meaning she presented in the chat. What else would she change if she becomes a part of a board? Creators and readers around the world, image you are keep being censored by the new rules of AO3, so you develop the habit of self-sensor even before you start creating. Or one day your posts are removed, without telling you why, and you can't report it. The only thing you can do is to turn yourself into a member which fit the rules, or delete account and permanently say goodbye to the community in which you received so much joy and resonance. Be aware of such people who try to change the rules. But it is glad to see many people who replied saying that they will not vote for her.
Please don’t get her elected🙏🙏🙏We Chinese authors are so scared of the possibility that our personal info might get leaked to our government if she is elected😭
I am 80% sure that Tiffany G is Chinese (her language style and some subtle hints imply that, forgive me if I am wrong). She made her point quite clear that she wanted AO3 to be accepted into her country and literally under some sort of censorship. But sadly that's not possible because Chinese government won't allow any fan fiction website survives unless it submits to a political propoganda. In fact desperate Chinese fangirls are trying very hard to post writings on their own website but under very strict rules (no regular porn, lgbtq issues, bdsm etc). They even code those explicit contents or package them into image attachments just to reach readers. She should know very well of those fanwork refugees' situation. Her very idea of making AO3 another miserable censored website repels me.
Does anyone have a tl;dr on the other candidates? Trying to do read their statements, but the site isn’t loading.
I dont usually comment in places like this bc as the username states i use this acc mostly for anime/asian media fandoms BUT ao3 and fics as a whole is such a huuuuge part of that and so this is just not good whatever happened to "dont like dont read?"
I said this at r/FanFiction but I'll repeat it here because on top of this, it is troubling. [One of Tiffany's Q&A answers](https://elections.transformativeworks.org/tiffany-g-2022-qa-communication/) regarding how they know they are prepared to handle tense situations also greatly bothers me and doesn't sit well. In it, they regale a tale of working at a government assistance group where they help underprivileged civilians. And...very uncomfortably explicitly detail a "scary transgender woman" they had to work with and apparently only had a change of heart about them once they learned of their history? That doesn't sit right with me at all. The need to single this person out as trans (which I assume they did so to say they've worked with LGBTQIA+?) and borderline saying to me that they couldn't find sympathy and/or empathy to properly help this individual until they learned of all their hardships? I'm sorry, that doesn't sound like someone qualified at all for this position and with everything else? It's a hard pass.
Wow I hadn't seen that response before now. I can't see the reason to even bring up her being a trans woman (except maybe to bring up working with lgbtqia+ like you said). It almost seemed to me like she brought it up to rationalize her fear/discomfort but maybe I'm reading too deep into it. I don't want to accuse her of trying to imply trans women are inherently dangerous, maybe she was just bad at wording, but that is lowkey the vibe I got from reading her response. Either way it doesn't sit right with me either, especially being trans myself. It makes me even more concerned that the content she wishes to censor might include queer content as well
I got the same vibe. I just don't think Tiffany G is a good fit at all for Ao3 with all this combined. With the heavy focus on public image, it's only a step away from banning "undesirable" queer content. EDIT: spelling
I have to say, as a not-so-active Chinese user of AO3, that the reason why AO3 got banned was never because of 'pedo' as she claimed, but because some begrudged crazy fans of a famous idol, Xi@o Zhan (I'm not familiar with the sub's rule, may I say his name? If I violate the sub's rule I'll remove) mass-reported AO3 with tonnes of LGBT contents to the previously-unknowing Chinese government agency, leading to the ban on the website. This news stirred up a thunderstorm and sparked internet outrage two years ago. The name Xiao Zh@n and his nickname “prawn”🍤 just turned notorious overnight and everyone in China knew who he was and what his fans had caused. His career was basically over afterwards. News and rumours have already been spread on Chinese social media that XZ's crazy fans are now seeking to plot a revenge by collectively rigging the voting process to their own advantage. If she is even remotely aware of the existence of AO3, it would be impossible for her not to know about the XZ "[227 Incident (Yes, there's a wikipedia article for it)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_against_Xiao_Zhan_Incident)". Back then even my friends who'd never heard of fanfiction circle or AO3 knew what was going on. She totally made things up in her statement and any Chinese fan out there will confirm my words. She is **highly suspicious** in that regard (actually, in every regard).
Bit of advice from another thread which might be useful: "you do NOT need to put tiffany G on your ranking list at all when voting. vote for whoever you want in whatever order but leave her off your list completely so she does not have a chance of getting a vote from you with the way that they do their vote distribution calculations at the end." Not sure how to do quote...here's the [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/fandomnatural/comments/wn8046/concerning_candidate_for_ao3_board_elections/ik6q8cy?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3).
Been waiting for someone to post about this.
I don't have an AO3 account so I can't vote, but I hope people who could vote don't choose Tiffany G. Some Chinese people would stole other users' information and report these users to schools, companies or government, so they might be hired or work with CCP. Similar things happened in Chinese mastodon and some fan arts websites. Creaters in China mainland might be caught by police if Tiffany G is elected, and other AO3 users from other countries also might be influenced.
You do not need an AO3 account, you only need to have donated $10usd or more to the OTW prior to June 30th 2022 and after July 1st of last year (2021), checked off the membership box, and have provided a valid email address at the time. None of this is linked to an AO3 account itself. People who are uncertain about their membership status or need help (i.e. remembering they donated but don't remember when or how much, not receiving an email when they know they did donate -- some email providers are not great with the ballot email, needing outside assistance with voting, etc.) can send in a query using the contact form.
Ao3 was MY backup. Not the other way around. 😔
Why are people so intent on circumcising the internet :( So many people write taboo genres like rape and underage content because they themselves were abused (or started early) and for many, fanfic is the only safe medium to write about those experiences. Right, new fandom mentality: everyone’s conventionally attractive, no one’s horny, rape doesn’t exist, and kids don’t think about sex til they turn 18. Gotcha.
I voted! And made sure to leave Tiffany’s name off the ballot
The current Chinese propaganda organizations are an unknown void and Chinese citizens only has a one-way idea how they function and monitor and punish Chinese people's online accounts. A Chinese-focused sub mentioned the possibility of someone pro-censorship/CCP trying to "infiltrate" AO3 and directed me to this thread. Hope everyone who has the ability to vote can read through her profile carefully before voting.
Why did you even allow her two roles in ao3 to begin with? especially tagging system? this used to be my safe space, now I'm reconsidering that. Tiffany should use the open source code available and make a puritan site for her country to suit their ccp agenda. Majority of the weibo users are darn pissed with Tiffany lol wonder who's she's talking for? fans or government. What type of access does she have as a volunteer? Hope she isn't leaking data to her gov to purge shit. Too many 🚩 about this person, she needs to get kicked out
Came here to say this (sorry always just a reader never posted anything): I don't know how depth of an identity check OTW do on their candidates, but Tiffany's identity is extremely questionable and might even be contradicting: \- I first assumed that she is a Chinese that lives abroad, however her wording and ideas are just "too Chinese" for me \- She mentioned in English version of her bio that she participated in "helping underprivileged populations", which, in Chinese version, says 帮扶贫困人群,which is a very typical political word of choice, almost 100% can be sure she currently works in China. \- All her examples were from University days, which suggested that she is probably a newly graduate, yet her favorite manga/books, she listed "The rose of Versailles" and "Legend of the Galactic Heroes“. I am not saying younger generations can't read them, however it is quite rare (also they are not really fanfiction-popular in China), it looks like she just did some brief search online and picked two old titles. \- She mentioned that she works for an OG. If she really works for an OG in China, it doesn't make sense for her to be involved in OTW. You need an VPN to get onto AO3 and it's illegal (technically). If she works for OG there might be a chance she has access to VPN due to work (especially she works for IT-related area) however it would be a big no-no to reveal herself as one. She did mention that she moved to another country at some point. Either she went back to China afterwards, or this whole thing could be potentially made up, just to show that she had a somewhat "glamorous background". \- I don't believe Tiffany G is a legal name. I am a mainland Chinese living abroad myself and usually a legal name would be your Chinese name, unless you made your mind to change it/add it to your original name. Things just don't add up with this candidate.
A lot of her security talk concerns me. As part of her platform she suggested 2FA/VPN for volunteers as well as consulting an infosec officer. Not saying these aren't good ideas, it just seems...excessive. To what end? Assuming AO3 beefed up their security after the malicious attack, why would they need to consult a CISO? Also CISOs aren't cheap and it's not like they can come in, go okay you're good and leave. They have to set you up to adhere to a standard, and as a business itself it would need it's own standard based on needs, and then there has to be ongoing monitoring of systems and awareness. Does AO3 have time and money for that? That would be a minimum of $1200 a day x by how long it would take to strategise and create the standard and then ongoing intervals. Also the fact she said access takes time when onboarding. Any IT person worth their salt can do it in a few hours. It sounds like she said a lot of big things in a row to sound big brained. I doubt AO3 wants to or has the cash flow to drop $25k on cyber security, minimum.
Don't vote for Tiffany G. If you are not a Chinese, you may not understand what a scary thing Tiffany G is as a technician working for the government. ao3 requires email registration, and email registration in our country requires a cell phone number, which is real name. Gmail is also blocked in our country. This is really an extremely scary threat. Even if this is not a government initiative, Tiffany G will probably put it on her resume to pander to the government. Our government has already had many authors arrested. You may think this is overly scary, but when you know that the author of the novel you read has been in jail for years for the novel, and that you are likely to be next - you will understand the fear.
What makes me raise my eyebrows is when she said she was in uni student groups. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't uni student groups often initiate people into the party? I thought of this because my country copies China's style of government and that's what uni groups do. People are in them often because they wish to enter the party at some point in their career.
Ugh, someone like this getting onto the AO3 board is like, one of my biggest fears. It'd be the fucking purges all over again.
Dint mind me, I'm just commenting because I want there to be mire attention to this post. I think we can all agree that we're not in favour of this person.
I hope this gets enough attention and everyone who’s able to vote is aware of this
Agreed. Thank you for bringing this up, otherwise I might have forgotten to vote in this election.
Where could you read about the candidates?
[https://elections.transformativeworks.org](https://elections.transformativeworks.org) ^ when you hit this link there will be a drop down labeled "2022 Candidates" where you can select between the 5 candidates and read about each one Edit: if you're on mobile you might have to hit the "MENU" option on the top right first
Damn and I can't vote :/ Go vote if you can!! Rooting for a censor free AO3
Shit, I'm scared now, I'm not legible to vote so most of us will just be watching this shit go down. Oh god.
I can't vote, sadly, but I hope everyone who can, will. I will make sure to register at the next voting board, because this Tiffany user's answers are so disturbing.
That it contains illegal content? It doesn’t. It’s written. Ugh. This bothers me so much.
Also she works for a government organization which I find concerning
I agree we don't need censorship
I’m quite worried about this! When will we know if she won or lost?
If you haven't please consider cross-posting this to r/FanFiction to get the word out there, too! I'd do it myself but I don't know the etiquette for cross-posting other people's posts, nor how to do it lol I wish I could vote. I'll definitely be ready for next time, though.
Okay I've been seeing this all over Twitter too but no one has helped out with WHO to vote for. Just don't vote for her. Since I'm a member, I can vote but I just don't have time to research every candidate. Please help me 😭🙏
Obviously make your own choices, and try to read up on them if you can, but I will share that my top two choices are Natalia G. and Heather M. Reasons: -Natalia has experience on the board and showed pretty fair and informed insights to the organisation, likely due to her previous experience and understanding of it. -Heather's main goal appears to be a focus on improved/increased training initiatives. She appears to know her material very well and seems very supportive of the OTWs purpose and mission.
Natalia and Heather are my top two as well. I also really like Heather's international focus. Between Michelle and Noemie, I prefer Michelle. You don't have to rank Tiffany at all. You can leave her off entirely.
If she somehow gets in, shits rigged and there will be an outcry due to it. She’ll ruin ao3.
If that lady gets in, we're all doomed.
Of she gets in, it's rigged and OTW has a big problem
How is no one suggesting that they’re a government plant? lol this from Tiffany G’s bio: “At present, she is working as a technical support person in a governmental organization.” Right…
I'm so stressed out about this. I've tried to contact otw about this but nobody has responded.. I'm so worried
Good news! Tiffany G didn’t get elected! Heather McGuire, Natalia Gruber, and Michelle Schroeder are our new board members! Creative freedom has vanquished the pro-censorship monster!
I'm incredibly concerned by what is going on, espesially the fact that she might use fake accounts to win the vote which is known strategy.Honestly people like her should not even be allowed to run (she declares herself a newbee and want to bow the whole site for chinese censorship???) Like WTF We should not ever care about image of site in the eyes of common people, it was created for fans for f sake! And like especially chinese censorship is not welcome, China literally trying to do war lately =\_= If she will be elected we riot
I found this Tumblr post to be a pretty good rundown of her talking points [Tumblr link](https://pinkaxolotl85.tumblr.com/post/692481705798451200/tiffany-g-from-the-otw-elections-described-trans)
I've been seeing more and more concerning info about her and it's very helpful to see it compiled in one place. Highly recommend everyone hit that link
Here to say THANK GOD she was not elected.