Archive of Our Own, the Home of All Things Fanfiction, Is Under Attack

By Megan Peters

To many, the art of fanfiction is sacred. The hobby has been around for decades and has only become more popular as time has passed. The rise of geek culture turned the once-niche topic into a household name. From My Hero Academia to Star Trek, fanfiction covers the gambit of all things fandom, and its home online is Archive of Our Own. But right now, users are rallying together as the beloved website is currently under attack.

Yes, you did read that right. AO3 is in the midst of battle right now, and that isn't an exaggeration. The fanfic site is facing a barrage of DDOS attacks, and it has left Archive of Our Own down for more than a day.

You might have seen AO3 trending online this week, and sadly, that is because of this DDOS attack. The situation came to light on July 10th as the Twitter for AO3 acknowledged users were having issues with the site. The problem only escalated to the disbelief of users, and it didn't take AO3 long to confirm the situation was more complex than first expected.

"It looks like the Archive is under a DDoS attack causing the servers to fall over. Our volunteer sysadmins are working on countermeasures. Please be patient with us, we'll be back," the site shared. "We're still working to mitigate the DDoS attacks. In the meantime, you may receive various error messages or encounter display issues with the site layout."

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Given the popularity of fanfiction and its home on AO3, the website's outage is now taking over social media. From TikTok to Tumblr, everyone is trying their best to help out the nonprofit site. With few confirmed details available about the attack's origins, netizens can only offer AO3 their support from afar and be patient while the site's admins war against a slew of DDOS attacks. At this time, no word has been given on an estimated fix, so AO3 readers will have to hold strong for a little while longer.

Has this AO3 outage impacted your reading schedule at all? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!

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