‘People are in withdrawal’: Fanfiction fans left hanging as cyberattack shutters AO3

Los Angeles, November 7 - A cyberattack has plunged one of the world's most popular fan fiction libraries, Archive of Our Own (AO3), into darkness, leaving millions of fans unable to access their favorite stories since October 29. Johanna Sarriot, a writer and co-founder of Love Love Books, a pop-up romance bookstore in Los Angeles, commented on social media about the fans being in withdrawal.

Fan fiction, which involves amateur authors crafting stories using characters and worlds from existing books, films, or TV shows, has become a significant force in the publishing industry, generating hit books like E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey and Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis. Launched in 2008, AO3 has grown to house over 11 million registered users and nearly 18 million works.

Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor and founder of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) that manages AO3, explained that the site's mission is to provide a space for fans to engage in non-commercial creativity without ads, censoring, or selling data. The non-profit stated it does not believe the user database, containing usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords, was stolen, but cannot rule it out.

They affirm that AO3 is not gone, with no data loss and plans to restore the site as soon as possible. Tushnet anticipates the site will be back in operation within a month. For web developer Yohan Mebrouk, the extended timeline suggests the severity of the attack, which may stem from limited resources or the need for a comprehensive software upgrade.