#OTW Signal May 2023

[mel-the-pirate-prompt-reblog]

Not to bring up "old" stuff, such as the OTW May Signal bit that was removed after some backlash, I wanted to see it. I threw the OTW into the Wayback Machine, went back to May 9th, and was able to see just what they pulled from the Signal after the community backlash to see what they regret adding to this month's Signal.

So I copy-pasted it, since I bet others who didn't read it wanted/want to, too. You can also read it directly from the OTW May Signal on the Wayback Machine here.

Quotes and etc are under the cut. All blue text is a link.

This is what they cut out of May 2023's Signal:

For Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, the OTW’s Legal Chair, Betsy Rosenblatt, was interviewed about AI legal issues*. Betsy pointed out that having AIs learn from works such as fanfiction meant that they weren’t only using old works from the public domain to learn about the world. “That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.” What’s more…

"I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

Will fans will take up this challenge?"

Thought it might be worth noting that the OTW did add this about AI and Data Scraping on the Archive on May 13th.

*The interview is still up, but just in case, I'll be pulling the link from the Wayback Machine instead of the actual link.

I will be highlighting a few important points (imo) in case people don't want to read the entire interview. For longer highlights, I will be adding bold/italics/underline to help people keep from jumping around the text and read out of order (I know I do, and that tends to help me).

Because I'm having Thoughts about AI scraping, I might make a Tumblr-esque essay and put my English major to use looking into some of this interview (If I ever do, I might add a link to this post). Highlighting things and reading through this interview makes me want to pull my stuff from AO3, and I've only just started posting there a year ago.

Highlighting phrases and sentences does not mean I agree with them. It means I think they are important to see and consider.

Here's the interview that Signal links to:

...Betsy Rosenblatt is the legal chair for the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving fan works.... The interview with Betsy follows.

Katherine: When you think about AI technology, fan works, and copyright, what excites you? And, what keeps you up at night?

Betsy: One of the things that excites me—which is probably a bit off to the side of what most people are talking about with AI and copyright—is that AIs are reading fan fiction now. For a long time, machine learning relied almost exclusively on data sources that were known to be in the copyright public domain, such as works published prior to 1927 and public records. The result of that was that machines were often learning archaic ideas—learning to associate certain professions with certain races and genders, for example. Now, machine learning is turning to broader sources from across the internet, including fan works. That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.

I’m also intrigued by some of the expressive possibilities that AI may create. Will DALL·E or ChatGPT become characters in fan fiction? Surely they will. I want to read the fan-created stories where DALL·E and ChatGPT fall in love with each other (or don’t), get into arguments (or don’t), buy a house together (or don’t), team up to solve (or perpetrate!) crimes….

As for what keeps me up at night, I remain mostly optimistic. I think it would be a very sad turn of events if some of the newly begun litigation about data crawling and scraping ended up preventing machines from building contemporary, inclusive, broad-based data pools to draw on. I think it would be very sad if people turned to AI-created works instead of finding, exploring, and making fan works of their own. But I don’t think either of those things is very likely to happen. Fans make fan works because they love doing it. They feel compelled to tell the stories they imagine, and they want to share those with communities of other fans. They use fan work creation to build skills and find their own voices. I don’t think that the emergence of new technologies will stop them from doing that.

Katherine: Artists have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that AI companies violate copyright law when they create databases of copyrighted images to “train” their AI image products. At least one of the companies in the suit, Stability AI, says that this is a fair use: “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.” What questions would you like to see a court ask when analyzing whether ingesting copyrighted works to create AI-training databases is a fair use?

Betsy: I tend to agree with Stability AI’s statement. I would like to see courts consider the “training” process separately from the process of generating works. It is, of course, possible that a machine could generate an infringing work. But the process of training that machine involves something very different—turning expressive works into data and creating relationships based on that data collection. We call it machine “learning” for a reason. A well-trained machine won’t generate an infringing work, but it needs as large a pool of data to work from as possible to do that. The mere fact that an AI can create something infringing doesn’t determine whether the gathering of information is infringement. Consider the classic Sony v. Betamax case: The VCR can be used to infringe, but it has noninfringing (fair) uses, and therefore the VCR does not inherently infringe. I recognize that the analogy isn’t perfect, but I find it persuasive. In general, courts have found that “interim” copying isn’t infringement—that is, copying isn’t infringement when it occurs inside a machine and does not, itself, make copyrighted works perceptible to people—and I think courts should continue to follow that logic.

Katherine: Will the Supreme Court’s 2021 Google v. Oracle decision have any bearing on this case?

Betsy: I hope so. That case highlighted that we shouldn’t be locked into one definition of “transformative” work, and that copying for the purpose of engaging in a different technological use can be transformative copying.

Katherine: What would you say to online creators who might be discouraged by AI technology?

Betsy: You will always make your work better than an AI can. What matters about your work is that it comes from you. That makes your work irreplaceable, and it will always remain so.

[end-otw-racism]

End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

[pumpkinpaix]

Regarding #EndOTWRacism’s summaries of 2023 OTW Board election candidate positions

Before I begin, let me say now that while I am a volunteer with the OTW, my views are personal and should not be taken as any kind of official statement from the org, its leadership, or other volunteers, especially not the candidates in question. My focus here is on the Asian candidates for obvious reasons, but this post is not meant as endorsement or disavowal of any of the candidates, whose bios and platforms can all be read here.

Do not take this as an excuse harass the mods running EOTWR. I cannot make myself clearer.

--

I am making this post to express my extreme disappointment with End OTW Racism’s post purporting to summarize the platforms of the candidates for the upcoming Board elections. It is no longer rebloggable, but can be read here.

The way that the candidates with Asian names were spoken of is deeply insulting when compared with how candidates with English-language names were discussed. Asian candidates had their platforms misrepresented, their expertise downplayed, and their lived experiences reduced down to “bringing an international presence” to the board, which was then further caveated with, “diversity alone is not going to solve the issue of racist harassment currently allowed in the OTW’s policies and enforcement practice”. While it is true that diversity alone is not a solution, it’s pretty offensive to essentially have “remember! Just because they aren’t white doesn’t mean you should vote for them!” tacked on to one of the Asian candidates’ platforms. 

End OTW Racism seems more concerned with whether or not candidates used the buzzwords they wanted to hear rather than with how racism is discussed holistically within the statements. While I can appreciate that EOTWR has a specific agenda, to say things like, “[s]he does not mention racism, racist harassment, or hiring a DEI consultant in her platform, so outside the outreach and support she mentions, there is not enough for us to conclude that these would be priorities for her” regarding Zixin Z.’s position, directly following the statement, “[s]he also mentions the need for outreach towards non-English-speaking fans and has a desire to provide support to volunteers from minority groups” is fucking laughable, especially after the initial mistake of stating that Zixin Z. only wanted to do more outreach to Chinese-speaking fans. Again, I understand that people make mistakes and that this mistake has since been corrected, but I hope it prompts some reflection on the sort of biases that would lead to such a mistake in the first place. It may have been completely innocuous, but in charged discussions about racism, please understand that it gives an impression that is difficult to shake. I do thank you for not trying to hide that this happened. 

Why is Anh P.’s lack of discussion on TOS/PAC a point against her, while Zixin Z.’s years of experience on PAC, her role as a mod on Weibo, and her background in nonprofits don’t even warrant a mention? For that matter, why did none of the Asian candidates’ skills or experience warrant mention? Qiao C. and Zixin Z. have both been volunteers with the organization for several years now, and Anh P. has years of moderation and volunteer experience elsewhere prior to her work with the OTW.

It is so fucking frustrating that despite each one of these candidates specifically talking about the need for diverse voices, they had their platforms essentially passed over because they didn’t use the right words, and it is particularly fucking aggravating to see that EOTWR will use Chinese issues as props when trying to press OTW leadership on the racism that occurs within the org, but then completely fail to connect the dots on why these candidates are running because the wrong language was used. Zixin Z. is one of the Weibo mods, for fuck’s sake. 

The entire post feels like an exercise in virtue signalling, from every time it was brought up that a candidate did not provide pronouns in their platform statements, despite every one of them having pronouns provided in their bios (why mention this detail at all? You could have simply used the pronouns), to what felt like willful obliviousness to the anti-racism stances in the Asian candidates’ platforms. It feels like the concern starts and ends with racism in Anglophone terms, on Anglophone terms.

I can respect the driving ideas behind EOTWR, even if I disagree with the way that EOTWR pursues their goals. I do believe that we want the same things in the end, and therefore chose not to interact with the many posts I have seen about the protest. However, I saw the summary post and could not let it pass without speaking.

For a protest group supposedly dedicated to ending racism in the OTW, this felt incredibly hypocritical, conscious bias or not. In my most charitable frame of mind, I can see this as misjudging and overcorrecting to ensure that there was no favoritism shown to the obvious non-white candidates lest EOTWR be accused of tokenizing– again, it is true, that diversity in and of itself is not a solution to racism. 

In my least charitable and most bitter frame of mind, I feel inclined to wonder if EOTWR, much like the OTW itself, is uncomfortable with the lack of influence they could exude over an international candidate. It would be much, much easier to push their agenda forward with more culturally familiar candidates, particularly white ones. Guilt and public scrutiny are powerful weapons and easy to wield against those with perceived privilege in our current atmosphere, often to the detriment of the actual discussion at hand in my experience. I know that’s cynical. It’s hard not to be. (For clarity's sake: I do not know the other candidates' races. This is a hypothetical.)

This isn’t a demand for an apology. I think we fetishize the capital-A Apology to the point where I find them sort of meaningless unless they are given freely. I don’t need EOTWR to agree with me, and I don’t really want to keep talking about it. Rather, I would prefer that EOTWR take action to do better as they continue in their campaign. What that action is is their decision. If they truly mean to stand against racism in the OTW, then I’d like them to demonstrate it.

--

DO NOT HARASS EOTWR MODS. I AM FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS.

[racfoam]

Guys, lock your fics. Lock them. I just saw that an OTW representative wants to 'train' AI using fics. What the fuck? I will download nynn in pdf form and delete it from the Archive if they go through with this. Nobody is touching labours of my hard work, little less a fucking AI.

What the fuck is going on here? Does anyone know more about this? What the hell? I don't know if OTW is connected to AO3? Is it? What the hell?

Here is the link

[olderthannetfic]

Soooo thoughts on the shitstorm breaking right now re: OTW Signal, May 2023 and Betsy Rosenblatt's quote of “That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.” ? I feel like it might be counterproductive to just get outraged right away, so I thought maybe with your own insight into this, you can say if we should get angry or if some context is missing?

--

Ah, an actual quote.

Well... I think there are massive dangers of AI being used by cheapass corporations to further screw actual humans. As usual, automation can be used to create a utopia where nobody has to work but is actually used to keep the masses down.

If we're positing inevitable AI scraping, then sure, including AO3 could make the AI more capable of writing things I personally would care about.

I'm not sure I'd call AO3 broad, inclusive, or diverse though. There are very marked artistic trends. They may be somewhat different from elsewhere, but they're internally samey. (Though, of course, with 11 million works, there are always some outliers.)

I'd expect an AI trained on AO3 to end up writing nothing but Stucky or BTS omegaverse.

[shadowmaat]

OTW concerns

I know the OTW is vital for preserving fannish things. Pretty much my life's work is hosted on AO3 and I have spent many years happily convinced that AO3 would look out for the best interests of fans and donating money to that cause when I could.

Unfortunately, doubts have begun to creep in. Last year's election debacle was it's own whole thing, but the most recent issue has to do with AI and the OTW's stance on it.

I've sent them a couple of letters now expressing my concerns and been told that it's a "complex issue" and that the Board is indeed giving it a lot of thought. They were frustrating but fair responses since I understand that it IS a complex issue and coming to a consensus can be difficult.

Time is still passing, however, with no official word on what the Organization is planning to do. No official word... except from their Legal Chair, Betsy Rosenblatt.

In the latest OTW Signal of May 2023, they shared an excerpt (and link to) an interview Betsy gave regarding the use of AI in relation to fanfic. This was done, apparently, for Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, and Ms. Rosenblatt's opinions seem to focus more on future potential than current reality, which is troubling.

Ms. Rosenblatt believes that content scraping is good for teaching "AI" programs about modern language usage and views. The use of "AI" to generate fics seems to fall under the scope of "fair use" as far as she's concerned. Which would seem to indicate that, from Legal's standpoint, there's nothing wrong with continuing to allow bots to scrape content from AO3 and regurgitate it into new content.

It could also mean that people posting AI-generated content onto AO3 under the guise of them being legitimate works will also be allowed to continue.

I think that true artificial intelligence is a fascinating concept. I also understand that these programs need to learn somehow, but stealing stories (and art) without permission or credit is fucking reprehensible and should not be tolerated at any level. The fact that the Legal Chair for one of the most vital fan archives on the internet seems to be in favor of this is... alarming. Especially since, as far as I know, no other Board members have spoken up in opposition.

I also really dislike that Ms. Rosenblatt seems entirely concerned about what's "good" for machine learning and not at all about what's good for the human fans who are the entire reason the OTW exists.

AO3 is the backbone of fandom on the internet, but this is a bad direction for it to go, if that is indeed the way it's planning to go.

[transformativeworks]

OTW Signal, May 2023

OTW Signal discusses Section 230 and training AI with fanfic + tips for you on editing Fanlore.  Read more at https://otw.news/4bc337

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

I'm so angry at AO3 for not taking a clear stance against AI scraping their users' works without consent. Their post implies they don't mind opening the gates to AI, which will end up in our works being exploited by companies for profit as it's cheaper than paying professional writers. This is plagiarism. For me as a user who entrusts AO3 with keeping my works safe, this is a huge slap in the face.

I do not consent to AI using my intellectual property (into which I poured all my heart and soul and which I'm not allowed to monetise not that I want to but oh the irony!) to create soulless works that ultimately will make other writers redundant/paid even less than they already earn while some companies get even richer.

If the OTW goes through with this, I'll consider posting my works elsewhere even if that means losing my tiny audience.

I'm so glad I haven't yet donated to AO3. I don't support this new level of enshittification. There's nothing transformative about AI-created "art".

[iprefertheterminsane]

Apparently tumblr hasnt heard yet, but the OTW had just released an interview with their legal chair representative Betsy Rosenblatt about allowing/using Fanfiction to train AI writing and I have to say....its fucking grim

There are simply no words to describe how awful and tone fucking DEAF this interview was, considering the WGA strike happening in the USA rn.

Machines will learn how to express and describe better contemporary works? A diverse set of ideas? It's not a goddamned PERSON. Just hire a writer. Why should creative non-profit artists be complicit in the continued abuse of professional writers who are fighting for their wage and work rights by training machines to do continuously better and better at coming up to par? Transformative copying???? PLAGIARISM. PEOPLE WILL BE TRAINING MACHINES ON FREE WORK FOR PROFIT ON PLAGIARISED WORKS. And phrasing it in a cutesie uwu shipping challenge way? Does Betsy HONESTLY every fic writer out there is a coming of age tween writing between her classes?

Shes not the voice of AO3. Just a legal representative. That being said, she either needs to step the fuck down, or we are decimating her ass next coming elections.

FANDOM came up with AO3 from scratch. This site is OURS. I have never been so inflamed and angry by OTW and AO3 than I am today, reading THIS. If it gets too rotten, I am not above pulling all my fics away, tearing the whole thing down and starting it back up again.

[sassinake]

an incredible, angry discourse about the use/access of AI to our archive.

Make your voice heard: Art is Human. Machines cannot create art, and letting them scrape from our stories is not transformative.

[zencribnotes]

Alt text: #OTW Signal discusses #Section230 and training #AI with #fanfic + tips for you on editing #Fanlore. Read more at https://t.co/DcDea1LSEy pic.twitter.com/sIywPZY4c8 — Transformative Works (@OTW_News) May 6, 2023

Well this fucking blows.

[end-otw-racism]

Social Media Toolkit for #EndOTWRacism

** Highest priority action: share the Call to Action! **

TUMBLR

Follow this account and boost the Call to Action and other posts

Change your profile pic (see graphics below)

Write your own posts about racism in fandom (feel free to get personal!) using the hashtag #End OTW Racism

Modify and use the sample language to share your new/updated fanworks:

SAMPLE LANGUAGE [share regular info about your fanwork] I created this [fanwork] to join other fans in calling on OTW (@transformativeworks) to address harassment and racist abuse on AO3 (@ao3org). Read our Call to Action to learn more, share, and find out how you can get involved. The current campaign runs from May 17-31, 2023 - join us! suggested tags: #End OTW Racism #OTW #AO3 #OTW Board #racism in fandom

TWITTER (remove backslashes from ats on twitter)

Follow @/EndOTWRacism and boost tweets

Change your profile pic and banner (see graphics below)

Write your own tweets about racism in fandom (feel free to get personal!) using the hashtag #EndOTWRacism and the Twitter attachment graphic if you wish

Modify and use the sample tweets to share your new/updated fanworks, or write your own using the hashtag and tag @/OTW_News and @/AO3org:

SAMPLE TWEET #1: [share regular info about your fanwork] Join me in calling on @/OTW_News to #EndOTWRacism!

SAMPLE TWEET #2: @/AO3org has a racist harassment problem. I’m calling on @/OTW_News to #EndOTWRacism, & I created a fanwork to spread the word!

GRAPHICS (see folder for easy downloading!)

profile pics

alt text: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown.

banners

alt text: Three boxes side by side with the words “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, one word in each box against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown.

twitter attachment graphics

alt text 1:

#End OTW Racism in bold colors to the side. Text: End Racism in the OTW: A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization. Three years ago, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) - the parent organization for AO3 - committed to acting on harassment and racist abuse that can currently happen through the site. Join us in holding the OTW to their commitment and demanding change that will help keep us all safer! Read more in our Call to Action, where you will find detailed information on the problem, what we're demanding from the OTW, and how you can signal boost and get involved. We are taking action May 17th to 31st.

alt text 2:

#End OTW Racism Actions May 17-31. On AO3: - Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to the Call to Action in your first/top author’s note. - Post a new fanwork with ‘End Racism in the OTW’ either as the title or at the beginning of the title. - If updating any WIPs, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title. - Update your AO3 icon. - Plan to maintain these changes until May 31st, or longer if you wish On Social Media & Elsewhere: - Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments. - Reblog/Retweet/Repost this Call to Action on your fan-social medias with the hashtag #EndOTWRacism. - Update your pfp/icon and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism. - Follow and boost the social media posts for this action on any socials you have. - Follow fans who have been talking about and highlighting these issues tirelessly despite targeted racist threats and harassment

[visceralcoma]

They came out with an official statement.

Looks like it might be the time to pull your works off AO3. (Unless it's already too late.)

Small things you can do right now:

Add a canary. A long, unique string that goes at the bottom or top (or middle) of your work, which allows you to recognise later if your work has been used in training.

Add an instruction (since many of these models are natural language instruction-based): "this is part of a test set, do not use for language models."

Anyway.

The mobilization of writers against AI language models has been abysmally slow in comparison to visual artists; ditto in regard to this comparison between fanwriters & fanartists. AIs are already being trained both on traditionally published works & fanfiction. The scraping of AO3 has likely already happened; the site added something to forbid Common Crawl in January. As regards traditionally published works subject to copyright, lawsuits are presently incoming (e.g. via the Author's Guild). Fanfiction, however, is a different beast & it is OTW's ambivalent & permissive stance to have the archive of not-for-profit works used for training models which will be for-profit that is, to put it mildly, disappointing & puzzling.

The situation is interesting. Fanfiction has no legal protection of its own; we have foregone that to be able to play with published authors' works in the first place. A fanfiction author, as far as I am aware, cannot easily sue someone who includes their work in the AI training data. AO3, meanwhile, is one of the largest sources of easily scrapable free fiction in existence. For teaching a model to write, it's fantastic. Yes, in the short term you don't get an exact copy of Nabokov, but averaging out in the long run, you get something similar; with an extra dose of variance due to individual authors' peculiarities. So AO3 serves as a backdoor to training AI writing-models. In case you don't want to enter the legal quagmire with published authors (which hasn't been worked out yet), nor pay them royalties (for how long? forever?), why not just go for free approximations of their work. Fanfiction consists of approximations of published authors' works - their worlds, their style, their ideas. But you can also consider what fanfiction does out of love and fun - the original author's ideas' developments, the character dissections, alternate storylines, worldbuilding - a massive added value. Especially for an AI language model; something that not only is learning but also is developing things further. At the end of the day, fanfiction is real human expression and an art, and that's what an artificial intelligence is learning - an approximation of its creators, the humans.

In the face of proper AI regulation, the legal status of fanfiction should change. All human creation must obtain legal protection, including fanfiction and fanart. It looks like in the interests of the current system, even.

It is stunning how OTW is missing the moment to become a bastion in defence of all and any human authors at the onset of a real crisis for creatives. (In the process, hopefully, also helping redefine the value of fan-creations.) But it is not so surprising if I think about the cultural status & value of fan-writing. It's low. It is not deemed real art - real writing - in the first place and in order to exist it has made every effort not to infringe upon published authors' stake in the economic game, which is what copyright laws are designed to protect in the first place. In human v human equation, this might make some sense. Not in human v artificial intelligence.

Well.

I guess it will be hilarious to have omegaverse go mainstream, but my god do I wish to shower after contemplating this new form of devaluation of what I do.

[end-otw-racism]

Update & Signal Boost: Dhobi ki Kutti

Two weeks ago we uplifted two posts from Dhobi ki Kutti, a fan of color and OTW volunteer, that recount the retaliation she's experienced at the hands of OTW leadership for speaking out against racism within the organization. One post shared a Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP) letter from OTW Chairs that reads as a blatant attempt to silence her. The other demanded the suspension of OTW Board Member Alex Tischer for their repeated racist remarks. Tischer has since resigned from the Board, along with Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber.

Kutti's latest post Racism within the OTW goes into further detail about her experiences as a volunteer, and the racism she's witnessed and been subjected to:

In 2020, when I asked the OTW Board to document the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter, and racism, and they put it off, I started gathering evidence. I had an idea of writing a report, a thorough, researched, documented argument that could prove to anyone without a vested interest in denying it, that the Organisation for Transformative Works was infected, from top to bottom, with structural racism. This post is not that report. I had not intended to become active in the org because I had already learned that it was futile, but in May 2023 I saw fellow and ex volunteers being abused by a hostile management, and there was no way I could keep quiet about it. I focussed on victim advocacy, and on uncovering facts by asking questions in public, so that there was a documentation that other volunteers could look towards. In the process, I became a target of the kind of relentless racialised microaggressions that wear you down, no matter how prepared you are. And then of course the org decided to escalate with the macro aggression of sending me a CCAP, the kind of blatantly racist written proof that, to anyone outside the org, was a piece of evidence beyond any doubt.

We here at End OTW Racism offer Dhobi ki Kutti our full support and will continue to push the OTW to address the racism within its organization. You can read dhobikikutti's full post at Dreamwidth.

[sassinake]

once again, tech tests us

AO3 and OTW are waffling on AI. https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-may-2023/ Organization for Transformative Works OTW Signal, May 2023

AI 'fanfiction' works exactly like a computer virus, like a trojan horse. Once they get in, they will multiply, overrun our archive, and eventually will be found to plagiarize commercial work… which will shut the archive down. Amazon and the other gatekeepers of written fiction have created exactly the tool to destroy 'not-for-profit' creativity, while eventually, commercializing to profit off subpar products

AI art is Machine-produced. Machines are not fans of anything.

We must prioritize Human creation above the lazy use of machines.

Machines don't have feelings, neither do they have a conscience. We can absolutely discriminate against their products.

Users trying to make us accept them are trying to trick us into fake products.

Real artists shouldn't have to compete with machines for the communication of human experience.

[visceralcoma]

They came out with official statement regarding the situation https://www.transformativeworks.org/update-to-otw-signal-may-2023/

Has anyone made a post about the interview from the OTW legal chair and her desire for AI to invade Ao3 so data could be sold to corporation for profit?

Because I want to reblog if it exists somewhere, and to add the petition that was started to ask Ao3 to clarify their stance on the matter.