On Twitter, Izzy reports that Archive of Our Own is now blocked in China:
THREAD: Sad day for Chinese internet users: Ao3, archive of our own, was reportedly blocked on Feb 29, 2020. I can’t begin to describe its importance to its Chinese users. It’s not mainstream like douban, but in China it‘s a refuge for literature created by and for women.
Censorship in China is capricious at the best of times, but according to Izzy, people suspect this was the result of a deliberate campaign by fans of the Chinese idol Xiao Zhan, who has a fair bit of fic written about him. Not so much that they wanted to take AO3 offline, as rather that the offending stories would be removed and/or the writers punished. However, you can protest as much as you want that nobody ever wanted AO3 to be blocked and that saying that these fans caused it is a lie, but you have to take the consequences of your actions. If you complain to the Chinese censors about a website, get it on their radar, what did you expect would happen? They can’t force AO# to actually remove these stories, nor are they known for their subtlety handling a ‘problem’. This was always going to happen.
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