Trivia / Archive of Our Own

• Banned in China:
  • A literal example in that, on February 29, 2020, Archive of Our Own was banned in China with no announcement whatsoever. While Chinese users initially thought it was a problem with the site, the archive staff said the matter had been investigated and the problem was not on their end. It was revealed it was banned over explicit gay portrayals of mainland Chinese actor Xiao Zhan from The Untamed, causing quite a backlash in China. Ironic, as The Untamed is adapted from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi... which is a Boys' Love web novel. It's also suspected to be for the very unsurprising reason of how Archive of Our Own hosts very explicit work, considering how China censors work like that heavily. The offending work has, as of 2022, the #5 most hits of any Real-Person Fic on the site.
  • On 13 December 2022, the site was "indexed" in Germany due to "child pornography content", temporarily removing it from Google search results for German IP addresses. In January 2023, the ban was lifted as a result of administrative errors.
  • In March 2023, Roskomnadzor had requested the site to delete 16 fics containing "child pornography". The site was subsequently blocked in Russia on 14 April 2023, after failing to comply with the request. A Ukrainian Twitter user claimed responsibility for the report in a deleted tweet.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Since the website allows users to delete their works at will, this happens a lot. Fortunately, users are also allowed to download fics, so an already-downloaded fic won't be lost forever.
• Why the Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • The site used to allow users to put as many tags as they wanted on their fics. After August 2021, however, it implemented a maximum limit of 75 tags that can be put on a fic after the infamous Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi fic Sexy Times with Wangxian, which had so many tags attached to it (over 4,400 at its peak) that it actually started causing technical problems for mobile users and those with weaker PCs.
  • The site usually allows people without accounts to leave comments as "guest" users. In April 2024, this feature was temporarily disabled after bots started leaving hundreds of comments claiming works were generated by AI, followed by abusive spam and porn gifs. Guest comments were enabled again after 3 days, but the site now requires users prove they're not a bot before commenting, and has guest comments disabled on works by default.

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