Further Meta Takedowns + A Poll

[yourlibrarian]

Following my post in June about having content flagged at AO3, I received a notice this week about two more works. While I don't have any problems deleting them, there was a bigger issue within the email.

"On 17 June 2022, you were formally warned for violating Section IV.H. of the Terms of Service, and on 20 June 2022, we clarified for you that "We do not consider responses to movies or episode reactions to be non-ephemeral fanworks." You were also told that additional violations could result in your suspension from the Archive.

As a result of this second violation, you have been suspended for 30 days. While you are suspended, you cannot post, edit, or delete content on the Archive."

While this isn't an issue as I am often posting new content to AO3 only during the March challenge period, the bigger problem is a further strike which could occur at any time just because someone decides to report a post.

I have again asked for clarification as to what could distinguish a piece of meta about an episode vs an episode review or reaction. It might be a while before there is a response. But given the lack of examples or specifics, potentially anything I have posted could be considered in violation.

I am wondering if anyone else has had meta they posted at AO3 challenged? A quick poll:

Poll #27940 AO3 Violation Reports

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

I have had contact from AO3 about meta I have posted

View Answers

Yes
1 (6.2%)

No
15 (93.8%)

I have responded to AO3 or have had responses from AO3 to my questions

View Answers

Yes
3 (27.3%)

No
8 (72.7%)

Comments

[svgurl]

I've never had that experience but I do know someone who posted about about AO3 telling them the same thing regarding their movie reviews a few months ago. Unfortunately, I don't think they got much clarification from follow up emails.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, the problem is that the emails state "We recommend that you review your account to ensure that your other works are in compliance, and that you do not violate the Terms of Service again."

However without any guidance as to what exactly the problems are, how can someone know if they're in compliance or not?

[starwatcher]

I got nothing except, "Huh?" If you take away the roundabout construction, the message is, "We consider responses to movies or episode reactions to be ephemeral fanworks."

But, at its base, every fanwork is a response to a movie or episode. I've seen -- and enjoyed -- meta about The Old Guard movie, and it's listed as a 'fandom resource'. So I can't understand why your meta wouldn't also be a 'fandom resource'.

I marked 'no' to both questions, although I did have my Old Guard Transcript questioned -- but that was by users, rather than an "official" person from AO3. (They warned me that the transcript might not be allowed if anyone brought it to official notice. I assume that never happened.)

I have to wonder... who's complaining? Considering the volume of works posted daily, I'd be surprised that anyone could keep track, unless someone draws their attention to it -- which is a shitty move. Meta, whether or not it 'qualifies' under the rules is like everything else -- if you don't want to read it, go elsewhere rather than making a fuss.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, presumably anything fictional will fly but anything nonfiction has to fit within unstated (or at least non-public) guidelines. And you're right, when one has no way to know what could be considered a violation then that means it's easy for someone to submit reports maliciously.

[bluedreaming]

I don’t have any meta on Ao3 so I didn’t vote, but it does seem like someone is reporting your works maliciously. I’m guessing Ao3 doesn’t have a way to file that kind of abuse request?
Would it help if several different people wrote ao3 to ask the same question (“what could distinguish a piece of meta about an episode vs an episode review or reaction”)?

[yourlibrarian]

No, all reports are kept confidential. The particular works reported were all very different -- one was about books, one about a video game in this latest case. And the ones reported in June were about movies and TV shows. So it wouldn't seem to be someone who didn't like a particular review in a particular fandom and they might be two entirely different people.

I don't know what kind of response one might get. I know that because of the volunteer workload they ask that people not to submit multiple reports about the same work or issue. If someone had meta themselves on AO3 though, it might not be a bad thing to try, just for the security of their own works.

[bluedreaming]

Yes, it does seem like they could be different situations, so that’s good to know at least.
It’s tough because I know it’s best not to overload the requests and also to be fair to volunteers, but I’m also not sure how one might share a request for information that bears the weight of many people in a single request, especially in a fair and polite way. Perhaps a small petition of names simply to ask for concrete clarification with clear examples?

I do wonder if it might be worth asking if squidgeworld.org might be a friendlier place for meta. Since it’s much smaller and run by fewer people, it might be possible to ask for and request a clear yes or no about the issue.

But I realize that this is specifically about ao3 so please disregard my above suggestion if it isn’t appropriate for this post/comments.

[yourlibrarian]

Not at all, it's a very relevant issue!

I was wondering the same thing about squidgeworld (which I am aware of but know little about). Because, depending on the outcome of this latest incident, I can't in good conscience recommend people archive their works at AO3 -- which was at the heart of this community challenge. So the question then becomes, where else can meta be preserved in a way that it can be easily found?

Aside from the time and labor involved in doing so, if a fan uses an AO3 account for other things (whether fiction posting, bookmarking and reccing, etc.) then they could be jeopardizing the entire account by adding meta which is somehow judged to be a violation of acceptable content.

[bluedreaming]

I think it’s definitely worth asking at least, because squidge has done so much for fandom (and I am very new to all things Squidge too) and even created an image hosting place (images.squidge.org) specifically for fannish images because there aren’t a lot of good options. (And took over hosting the audiofic archive! So grateful that restoration is underway and new podfics can now be added again.) So even if Squidgeworld isn’t the right place, squidge.org might be able to work with others to provide a good solution.

The fact that this issue jeapordizes whole accounts is so frustrating and disheartening, especially when the whole point is to archive things.

I wonder if it’s against the tos to use ao3 to bookmark meta posted elsewhere?

[yourlibrarian]

Oh I wouldn't think so, I'm sure bookmarks could be used as such for fanworks. (If they pointed at spam sites or were otherwise misrepresenting content at the other end, I imagine it could violate ToS). Because ultimately it's other users who are flagging content and that means someone would have to be searching out and following bookmarks. And while I guess I wouldn't put it past someone to do maliciously, that would take rather a lot of effort on someone's part to seek out content elsewhere.

But thanks for the encouragement, I can definitely look into it 👍

[bluedreaming]

Yes, I generally find most people don’t even seem to be aware that external bookmarks are even a thing.

I wish you all the best and hope for a positive resolution and forward direction!

[yourlibrarian]

Well good news! I not only got a quick response it was a very positive one. So it looks like there would definitely be a home for meta works, and what's more as the Squidge World Archive runs on AO3's code, the process for transferring works there would be just the same.

[bluedreaming]

I’m so glad! And yes, everything works the same (collections, imports, site and workskins) so it should be just as easy to use.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

"depending on the outcome of this latest incident, I can't in good conscience recommend people archive their works at AO3"
...if those works are about a single TV episode or a movie, right

[yourlibrarian]

Well yes, those would clearly be at risk, but the larger question remains about what is considered meta (as well as distinctions between reviews, reactions etc.) After all, one of my works this time was about books and another about a video game.

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

No, please, don't do that. If anything, it slows down PAC's work.

[bluedreaming]

As I replied above, it’s tough because I know it’s best not to overload the requests and also to be fair to volunteers, but I’m also not sure how one might share a request for information that bears the weight of many people in a single request, especially in a fair and polite way. Perhaps a small petition of names simply to ask for concrete clarification with clear examples?

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

That might be a better way. I am not in PAC, i can't speak for them but putting all the information you think might be relevant is definitely more helpful.

[osteophage]

Good grief. I thought they would have dropped that by now, but they chose to escalate? I don't see how they square that with AO3 officially allowing fannish nonfiction.

[yourlibrarian]

I don't want to feed conspiracies but I can't help the niggling feeling that they simply don't want nonfiction on the site, so anything that isn't fiction doesn't get the benefit of the doubt. I mean their TOS FAQ literally says "Please use your best judgment; our general policy is to defer to creators in cases of doubt. Ephemeral content could include, for example, a single short sentence, a single unedited image or .gif with or without a short caption, a short unedited video clip, or a short unedited sound clip. Ephemeral content is generally meant to be read at a particular time: for example, a message about a particular challenge or a reaction meant to be read while or just after a particular episode airs."

Needless to say the examples of ephemeral are very different from a review and if the policy is to defer to the creators, well... I really don't know why they wouldn't go more inclusive than more restrictive. At the very least there is no question that it's a fanwork.

[swingandswirl]

What in the world...

I've never posted meta, so I didn't respond to your poll, but yeah, they need to have clearer guidelines about what is and isn't allowed.

[yourlibrarian]

Exactly. If any kind of review is disallowed, why not just say so in their public documentation? "Any work of (X format) is not permitted." Why let people post content in good faith (which I might add, is generally considered meta anywhere else) if you plan to take it down? It's a waste of everyone's time.

[author_by_night]

Why do they even *care*? Meta is still fanwork, IMHO.

[yourlibrarian]

I really don't know. There is plenty of non-fanwork content that gets posted regularly which takes up time. And if you're going to say meta is accepted and then start parsing particular (common) formats then is it really?

[galadhir]

That's weird. I've had a few character studies from several different fandoms on there for years. I think I'll go and back them up if they're having a purge on non-fic :(

[yourlibrarian]

I have meta stretching back a decade and there's never been an issue until this year. And there are meta fests on AO3 as well, both specific to meta and broader ones like the Unconventional Fanworks Exchange.

Yes, definitely back them up. One thing that I discovered when the works were locked is that the Download button disappears, so no easy PDFs or ePubs. One can still do a "save as" for an HTML copy but how many people know that?

[yourlibrarian]

It wasn't liveblogging. When I had my earlier posts reported and asked about elements of reviews such as length and analytical content (as opposed to simply recapping episode events or squee posts) I was told that neither was relevant when it came to reviews -- that all reviews were prohibited. From their email:

"We do not consider responses to movies or episode reactions to be non-ephemeral fanworks, regardless of how analytical they are. Changing the format in which you present these works will not change that they are not permitted under the Terms of Service."

But that sounds like it completely contradicts what you were told regarding an account doing movie reviews. And the issue of what elements constitute "reviews" versus "reactions" does not appear in the FAQ, nor did they offer examples in their response. Ironically what the FAQ does include is an example of a review as an accepted format:

"What do you mean by recategorizing a fanwork type?

For technical reasons relating to how our database is planned to evolve, we need for Archive administrators to have the ability to change a work type where it is clearly appropriate (e.g., a review essay or fanvid mistakenly or inadvertently categorized as textual fiction). "

[yourlibrarian]

That's definitely a unique review format, and I don't think it was meant to be poetic. I think it was just a formatting problem that wasn't fixed. But as it says in the summary, it is clearly a movie review. What's even stranger is that it's just one section of this post: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947897

It is not unlike the one I had made that was flagged and deleted, which had different chapters for different reviews.

I think there is a difference between a reaction and a formal review, but I don't know where the line is. It sounds like reactions are not allowed. I'm not sure about reviews.

I agree that there are definitely posts I would separate out as either reactions or reviews, but it's not my own definition that matters in this case which is the crux of the problem -- it's unclear where a line is drawn if we are going neither by length nor by inclusion of analysis, nor by whether or not the post ties the episode into other things. And AO3 has canonical tags for Reviews and Episode Reviews so presumably they are considered acceptable? If not then we're talking about yet another example of something indicating publicly that a format is included when it's not.

Regarding classifying reviews as meta, I would not call podcasts examining an episode meta either, but I have seen video essays about an episode I would call meta. (I frankly don't know if podcasts are accepted as transformative fanworks but I know I've seen them at AO3, so perhaps those are also fanworks that are at risk of being flagged, who can tell?).

But again, either nothing reviewing anything is acceptable in which case any meta piece about an episode could be at risk, or else there need to be examples of what constitutes a review and whether reviews are indeed accepted content so that people can contribute posts without wondering if some random flag by a passerby is going to put their whole account at risk.

[(Anonymous)]

Stopping by from Coy's hitching post [over on Pillowfort]. Just adding a point of unexplained boundaries around what AO3 accepts by offering up a podcast that includes episodes that are episode reviews - Merlisten (https://archiveofourown.org/series/914841). As a quick example, the second episode is tagged as 'Episode Review' and includes the summary:

An episode review of the first episode of Merlin, "The Dragon's Call."

[yourlibrarian]

I think this may in fact be what I saw, as I am subscribed to the Merlin tag feed from AO3 and I remember seeing several such episode discussions go by.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's pretty fucked up to complain about something, and then make it impossible to remove. :/

I thought AO3 was more meta-friendly, but well, I've seen them turn really bitchy about other things before so I guess this shouldn't be surprising.

I hate when people try to police fandom.

Re: Thoughts

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, it makes me wonder what the policy is if something else gets reported during the suspension period. It's not like one could do anything about content in the account.

I also can't reply to comments left. It hadn't occurred to me that "content" also meant comments or kudos, though since they have to deal with a lot of harassment issues I can see why it would.

[unspeakablehorror]

I'm going to give my thoughts on this statement here:

"We do not consider responses to movies or episode reactions to be non-ephemeral fanworks."

I've based this on the following TOS FAQ sections:
* Can I archive nonfiction?
* How will ephemeral be defined?
* What Fall Within the Definition of Fannish Nonfiction
* What isn't Fannish Non-Fiction
* How Will You Draw The Line Between Fanworks and Non-fanworks

I've also based this on my own definitions of words, and some guesses as to the purpose of certain rules. I don't work at AO3, so I can't say with certainty if this is how they're parsing all this. This is just how I would interpret a similar letter if it were directed at myself.

I don't think they have any issues with movie reviews. I think their objection to 'ephemeral' works is solely a desire to avoid being used as a 'social media' when they want to be an 'archive'. Thus anything they view as trying to circumvent that division is at risk of suspension. The issue is of course that this division is not absolute: the Wayback Machine, for example, is an archive that accepts blog posts as archival works. But it seems that AO3 has a more selective definition of what counts as an 'archival' work than the Wayback Machine (even beyond the requirement that it be fandom related).

I think the words 'response' and 'reaction' here are meant to signify a focus on your personal emotional response or reaction to a work, regardless of how analytical that emotional response is, or its length. The purpose is that the analysis focus on the work itself.

Example of what I'd consider more of a response or reaction:

I just watched Star Wars: A New Hope and I loved it because of all the different alien species. I found Greedo's design to be especially good, because of his combination of reptilian and insectoid traits.
[insert 10 paragraph description and analysis of what was enjoyed about Greedo and why]
What do you think? Let's have a conversation in the comments, or contact me on my social media at [insert url here]!

I would avoid posting something like the above because based on the TOS FAQ, I believe they would consider it in violation of their TOS. Furthermore, not only does the above violate the ephemeral works stipulation in multiple ways, but the violation is intrinsic to the topic of the work, and thus the only solution is to remove it in its entirety.

On the other hand, I think the following would not be in violation:

Greedo serves as an important foil to Han Solo in Star Wars: A New Hope. Cynical and self-serving, and yet too uncertain to take the first shot, [10 paragraphs of description and analysis] And this is why Greedo, despite seeming insignificant, is one of the most important characters in the movie.

Again, I think this is always going to be a bit of a blurry division, but that's the distinction I think they're trying to make.

[yourlibrarian]

You may well be right, but I marvel at the irony of a fannish site that would preclude any emotional response to be part of a review. And why decide that the two sentences are enough to reject the 10 paragraphs? A little much, I think.

[unspeakablehorror]

Ah, no. I'm not trying to say that I think the first example would be rejected because it *includes* the author's emotional responses. I'm saying I think it would be rejected because it is *about* the author's emotional responses. And thus the *focus* of the work is in actuality the author, and not the movie or the character. I think the second example could include all the emotional responses it wanted, as long as the focus was on the movie or character. So the problem with the 10 paragraphs in the first example is not that they are preceded by those two sentences, but that they are about those two sentences; that is, their topic is primarily the author, and is thus primarily autobiographical, and only incidentally referencing the movie character Greedo.

Thus my first example would be more appropriate for the user's personal blog, while the second would be an appropriate archival work *about* the movie (or more specifically, a character in the movie).

I really think they made a possibly poor choice with calling these sorts of things 'ephemeral' works, because the division being made here isn't always between 'ephemeral' and 'archival' works, but works that could allow them to be used more as a personal fan blog than an archive for fanworks, including meta. Some people want to archive their personal blog posts (like myself). So it could alternately be called 'social media' vs 'archival' works. This division is always going to be a little blurry in places, but I was simply trying to show two examples where I think one unquestionably is not allowable, while the other is.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yikes! They really should clarify the TOS.

[yourlibrarian]

Agreed, because what's there is not applying.

[yourlibrarian]

They have but I think there might be a further response still.

[milficwriter]

I didn’t get anything from ao3 but I did get stuff from other users because they didn’t like their ships being tagged in my meta.

Apparently don’t like, don’t read, is no longer a universal principle.

[yourlibrarian]

There are a lot of people who take issue with fic and art as well for various reasons. The difference there is that the ToS is very explicitly in favor of keeping those works, with only some exceptions for copyright infringement or harassment of other users. Whereas I think a meta piece could create a lot of objections among readers while it's questionable if the works would get the same support from the Policy & Abuse team. So every disgruntled browser could potentially get the work deleted.

[milficwriter]

for sure! i'm honestly really surprised by that

[osteophage]

Any resolution on this?

[yourlibrarian]

Sort of. I'm drafting a post that should go out tomorrow announcing our next MMM round which will discuss it.