One of the world’s biggest fan fiction sites, Archive of Our Own, has been down since October 29, and so far, services have not been restored after what the team has confirmed was a security breach. In an update shared on October 30, the website said it had detected evidence of a security incident and that the team was working on fixing the issue, while assuring users that no data had been deleted from its massive library of fan-contributed stories.
In the latest update, shared three days ago, the site’s operators said the work to bring it back is still in progress. They didn’t provide an exact date for when the site will go live, only mentioning that the original estimate of two to four weeks for restoration is still on track. On social media sites, multiple users have shared their dismay over the site being down for so long, while also highlighting a concerning trend supercharged by AI.
Soon after Archive of Our Own, popularly known as AO3, went down, several copycat websites, such as AO3.life, popped up. These sites appear to have illicitly scraped fan fiction from Archive of Our Own, and on AO3.life,
