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221loislane · 9 months

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A pattern of dismissal and retaliation: the experiences of Zixin Z. and the Chinese volunteers

We value infinite diversity in infinite combinations. We value all fans engaged in transformative work: fans of any race, gender, culture, sexual identity, or ability. We value the unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures while seeking to avoid the homogenization or centralization of fandom. -The Organization for Transformative Works, Our Values

The OTW and its volunteer team started off as “mostly white, middle class, middle aged, [American] coastal ladies,” but over time it has grown into an international community spanning across several countries and cultures. Serving a multi-cultural, multi-national community inevitably comes with its own challenges, such as accounting for different community needs and norms and recognizing the varying risk levels associated with volunteer participation.

The experiences of Chinese volunteers at the OTW, including 2023 board candidate Zixin Z., exemplify how the OTW has fallen short. The Chinese volunteers at the OTW have been continually ignored, dismissed, mocked, or threatened for voicing concerns when OTW activities stumble into sensitive political, cultural, or legal issues. They have also faced retaliation for speaking up against the racist behavior of OTW leadership.

We believe that OTW can find a way to handle these conflicts equitably, rather than dismissing or retaliating against volunteers who raise concerns. We’ve provided an overview as well as analysis under the cut.

First and foremost, we’d like to thank all of our fellow fans who have been compiling and sharing information: synonymous on dreamwidth, @221loislane, various nonnies on fail_fandomanon (FFA), Kutti, azarias, and many others. We would also like to commend Zixin, Kutti, azarias, and other volunteers for documenting the racism and abuse they have experienced at the hands of OTW leadership. For consistency, we will be linking primarily to synonymous and Kutti’s dreamwidth accounts. We are not affiliated with synonymous, Kutti, 221loislane, or azarias. We are also not affiliated with other fandom anti-racism campaigns.

Threats to expose Chinese volunteers to legal jeopardy

Recently, an OTW Board Election question directed at Zixin contained an unsubstantiated accusation that she had committed a crime, potentially placing her in legal jeopardy in her home country. This accusation is emblematic of the kind of situation that the organization must learn to navigate better.

In one country, this accusation is at worst in poor taste—just some typical Internet mud-slinging. But in Zixin’s situation, the accusation amounts to an allegation that she committed a crime that can, and has, resulted in real-world harassment, arrest, imprisonment, and disappearances within and outside of mainland China.

We encourage everyone to read through Zixin’s eloquent response, and we would like to thank Zixin for sharing it and Kutti for platforming it. We have chosen not to reproduce the text of the question here given its sensitive nature: Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A, "The redacted question"

Additionally, on July 29, 2023, azarias reported that this was not the first time Chinese volunteers had been placed in legal jeopardy by OTW leadership. We have chosen to reproduce her full post from FFA here, which can also be found on synonymous' dreamwidth post:

This is Azarias. I'm signing so that this story can be fact-checked. What happened with Zixin this week is the SECOND time I know of a volunteer trying or threatening to get mainland Chinese volunteers arrested and the Org responding with "Meh." Several years ago, there was a PAC volunteer who lived outside of China. They spoke Chinese as a first language themself, but did not like mainlanders. Being on PAC, they had access to AO3 user records in addition to all the info on volunteers anyone with Slack access can get. By design, the OTW doesn't collect much information on users or volunteers, but there's still more information than you want an authoritarian government to have. Another volunteer who spoke Chinese looked at their Twitter and saw that they were complaining about mainlanders in the OTW and "joking" about how they should let the CCP know about what those folks were doing. They also used ethnic slurs to describe mainlanders. The volunteer who saw this let another East Asian volunteer know (sorry I'm being vague here but I don't want to drag people into this without permission) and reported the tweets to OTW leadership. They were told someone would look into it but the process is really long and difficult so be patient. Weeks later this was still going on. The two volunteers who had reported this happened to mention it to me. I was alarmed, so I DMed some Org leaders on Slack and made my own report, reiterating what the original reporters had said. Within 24 hours of a complaint from me, a white woman, this person was fired from the OTW. After weeks of the East Asian volunteers' identical complaints not being addressed. I don't even read Chinese, y'all. I had to use Google translate to get the gist and ask a literate person what the idioms meant. The first complaint was made by someone who could read exactly what was happening, but the Org didn't consider it important when they said it. /azarias

In essence:

A Chinese-speaking volunteer on the Policy and Abuse Committee, who was not in the mainland and who had access to volunteer information, “jokingly” threatened to report mainland Chinese volunteers to the Chinese authorities.

When mainland Chinese volunteers reported this to OTW leadership, they were told that it would take a long time to be resolved.

OTW leadership only took action when azarias, a white, English-speaking volunteer, drew additional attention to the issue.

Chinese authorities have previously arrested and imprisoned fans in mainland China for writing so-called “pornographic” male/male stories, both fanfiction and original. In 2014, more than 20 female college-aged fanfiction authors in China were jailed for writing male/male fanfiction on a popular fanfiction archive called Danmei Xiaoshuo Wang (Danmei Fiction Website). In 2018, popular author Tianyi was arrested and sentenced to ten years in jail for “producing and selling pornography” featuring erotic relationships between two male characters. Recently, members of Chinese fanfiction communities have also begun to report each other to the authorities due to interpersonal feuds.

Ultimately, the OTW leadership responded appropriately to these Twitter threats. But it should not have taken weeks of inaction and the proactive involvement of a third party to get to that point. Whether through “joking” threats or explicit accusations, putting people in real, physical danger is clearly unacceptable behavior in the community. It is especially inappropriate behavior for individuals working for and representing the organization.

Tai-gi (Taiwanese) and Cantonese language tags

A quick rundown of events, originally compiled by synonymous from a series of FFA comments (synonymous post, “Dismissal of Chinese volunteers regarding their concerns of an additional language tag during Weibo recruitment”):

In March 2020, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) was banned in mainland China. However, Chinese OTW volunteers continued to maintain the OTW Communications account on Weibo, one of the biggest social media platforms in China.

In August 2020, the OTW began to recruit for Chinese language tag wranglers on Weibo. The OTW also added Cantonese and Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese) as language tags on AO3 without consulting the Chinese-speaking volunteers

Approximately a week before the launch of the language tags, OTW leadership (individuals unspecified) told the Chinese volunteers moderating the Weibo account to announce that works could be re-tagged with Tai-gi and/or Cantonese.

When the Chinese volunteers moderating the Weibo account pushed back against the mandate due to security concerns, then-board-elect Alex Tischer, who subsequently served as OTW Board Director from 2020-2023, told the volunteers to prioritize personal safety concerns and consider leaving the organization.

There is an enormous difference between an individual assessing their personal risk and choosing to volunteer for the OTW, and organization leadership mandating that volunteers put themselves at risk for an initiative for which they were not consulted.

Our most charitable reading is that the directive to promote Tai-gi and Cantonese tags was a well-intentioned but ill-conceived initiative to encourage community engagement. Unfortunately, it also crossed real-world political lines with potentially serious consequences.

In June 2020—two months before the directive regarding the Weibo post—the Hong Kong National Security Law went into effect, criminalizing secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign governments, along with any open speech, verbal promotion or intention of Hong Kong's secession from China. Article 38 of the law also asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction, meaning the law can apply to anyone in the world, even individuals living outside of Hong Kong and/or individuals of different nationalities. In this context, promotion of a Cantonese language tag could be interpreted as support of Hong Kong independence, especially given ongoing tensions between the role of Cantonese vs. Mandarin in Hong Kong.

Similar to the Hong Kong National Security Law, mainland China also has its own National Security Law which was passed in July 2015. It declares cyberspace as part of China’s national security interest, and its vague and all-encompassing language does not define specific actions that would be considered a violation of state security, Per Article 15:

The state shall: “prevent, frustrate, and legally punish any conduct that betrays the country, splits the country, incites rebellion, subverts or incites the subversion of the people's democratic dictatorship; prevent, frustrate, and legally punish any conduct that compromises national security such as stealing and divulging state secrets; and prevent, frustrate, and legally punish any penetration, destruction, subversion, and secession activities of overseas forces.”

Tensions between the Republic of China (located in Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (located in mainland China) have existed for over 70 years. The Beijing government considers Taiwan a breakaway province, while Taiwan considers itself a distinct entity from China with a democratically elected government. Promotion of a Tai-gi (Taiwanese) tag could be considered several different violations of national security, thus putting the Chinese volunteers moderating the Weibo account and the OTW itself at risk on multiple levels.

As an aside, Weibo is a social media platform used in mainland China. It is not a Taiwanese or Hong Kong platform. The most popular social media platform in Taiwan, where Tai-gi would be used, is Facebook. This further highlights the failings of OTW leadership to recognize the complex geopolitical tensions inherent in this decision.

Once again, we would like to direct everyone to Zixin’s response (synonymous post, “The redacted question”) for her personal account of this incident.

Weibo account shutdown

The proposed shutdown of the OTW Communications Weibo account is another example of dismissing Chinese volunteer concerns.

In May 2023, the OTW Board and Communications Committee chairs told volunteers that the Weibo account would be shut down in 30 days—once again, without consultation of any of the Chinese volunteers.

Reportedly, the Board and Comms chairs had been planning to shut down the Weibo for years. They cited “excessive workload for the mods” as justification for the shutdown, when in fact the mods of the Weibo account had not been consulted.

The Board stated that they would meet with the Comms chairs to discuss the shutdown before it went into effect. Chinese volunteers, including the Weibo mods, were not invited to the meeting.

To express their frustration with this incident as well as past mistreatment, Chinese volunteers began posting messages in Chinese in the internal OTW chat program.

Then-board member Alex Tischer posted the following message in German:

Wir können uns gegenseitig alle möglichen Dinge an den Kopf werfen aber wenn wir uns nicht auf eine Lingua Franca einigen erreichen wir nicht viel. [Translation: We can throw all sorts of things at each other, but if we don't agree on a lingua franca, we won't achieve much.]

The Board apologized for Alex’s response: "We also want to apologize for the dismissive and inappropriate behavior of Board director Alex, who replied in German to your comments with the intention of making herself harder to understand. The Board absolutely does not condone this behavior in any way, and we are ashamed that this has taken place.”

However, the Board did not apologize for misrepresenting the Weibo moderators’ workload and implying that it was the moderators’ fault that the Weibo account was going to be shut down.

Alex herself did not apologize, and in fact doubled down on her response while she was still a Board member.

The OTW Comms Weibo ultimately did not get shut down.

Initiatives such as the Weibo account shutdown and the Tai-gi and Cantonese language tags are initiatives that would have directly impacted the Chinese fandom community. The Chinese volunteers at OTW are in a unique position to understand the geopolitical, social, and cultural implications of such actions and the effects it might have—both on their individual well-beings and the OTW’s standing on the platform. Additionally, these volunteers are also subject to laws that could generate serious real-world consequences.

However, rather than listening to the people in the trenches who would have provided on-the-ground insight, OTW leadership gave the volunteers ultimatums. In the case of the Tai-gi and Cantonese language tags, it was: Break the law and put yourselves in danger, or leave the organization. In the case of the Weibo account shutdown, it was: Do what we tell you and take the blame, or suffer racist mockery from a Board member.

When a volunteer tries to tell the organization about circumstances unique to their country or culture, the organization needs to be equipped to understand and act upon that information. Heedlessly ignoring, dismissing, or mocking the feedback from Chinese volunteers did not serve the best interests of the community, the volunteers, or the organization; it simply perpetuated a pattern of racist behavior that appears to be deeply engrained in the OTW.

Excuses for disciplinary action

The same election question asker(s) mentioned previously accused Zixin of sharing Weibo user conversations in a Chinese language channel in the internal OTW chat program. Zixin answered in the OTW Elections discord, and the text was later compiled on FFA and then by synonymous: Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A.

At the time of this incident, Zixin was one of the moderators of the OTW Comms Weibo account. Zixin clarified that these conversations were public comments on the OTW Comms Weibo account, which could be viewed by anyone with a link to the post, with or without a Weibo account. The Communications Committee chairs at that time talked to Zixin and her Weibo co-mod after another volunteer brought up concerns about this, and she proceeded to deleted all public comments and reposts.

We, at Fandom Antiracism, would like to emphasize the definition of public:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Est. 1828 Definition | public | adjective pub·lic ˈpə-blik 1 a: exposed to general view : open b: well-known, prominent c: perceptible, material

We have also verified that the OTW Comms Weibo account is indeed public.

We believe this speaks for itself. We would also like to direct everyone to read the full text of Zixin’s gracious response: Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A

As another example, we would like to link to Kutti’s post about the disciplinary action that she received, which also contained unsubstantiated allegations as well as tone policing. Kutti is another volunteer of color who has been documenting the racist mistreatment she has experienced at the OTW. We would like to express our gratitude to Kutti for sharing this as a further example of racism within the OTW: Copy of CCAP sent to me by OTW Chairs, and My Response to It

We are hard-pressed to see the disciplinary actions carried out against Zixin and Kutti as anything other than trivial excuses to perpetuate racism within the OTW.

Conclusion

As we stated in our introductory post, we are long-time OTW members who believe the OTW can and should reform. We also support the following: anti-censorship, anti-harassment, and anti-racism. We are not seeking to take down the OTW. We want it to succeed.

The upcoming Board election has made us optimistic that the racism presented here has a chance of being addressed. However, we would like to call on the current OTW leadership to acknowledge its pattern of dismissal and retaliation against volunteers when they attempt, in good faith, to help the OTW serve fans everywhere across the world. Ignoring or attacking volunteers who raise legitimate cultural or legal concerns represents an abject failure by the OTW to uphold the values it purports.

If the OTW seeks to fulfill its mission and live up to its own values, it needs to adapt its organizational structure, policies, and leadership so that it can navigate the political and cultural realities of its international fanbase. We remain hopeful that it will.

Reblogs are welcome and encouraged.

#a thorough write-up of the history and context of some current events related to the otw

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221loislane · 9 months

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Additional Events, 07/28/2023

July 24, 2023: Dhobikikutti posts a copy of a constructive correction action procedure (CCAP) sent to them by the Tag Wrangling committee chairs alleging that they had linked a volunteer's wallet and fan names, that they had leaked internal documents against the rules, and also that they were making other volunteers uncomfortable when they "brought up tense discussions in public rooms"—referring to Kutti's internal activism on the treatment of fans and volunteers of color within the OTW. Kutti rebuts the Chairs' points and argues strongly that they are being targeted as a person of color for trying to make changes in structural racism in the OTW.

July 25, 2023: The test ballot for the OTW election is sent out to volunteers, containing candidates' full wallet names. Audrey R.'s wallet name reveals her to be a former Republican congressional candidate, sparking backlash on Twitter and elsewhere. The OTW posts a statement condemning harassment of candidates, obliquely referencing the treatment of Chinese candidate Tiffany G. in last year's elections.

July 26, 2023:

The OTW announces that Audrey R. has withdrawn her candidacy.

OTW Board member Alex Tischer, who has made previous dismissive and racist statements regarding Chinese volunteers, among other incidents, posts a response on the OTW Slack in response to a volunteer asking why Kutti was reprimanded when Alex has not had similar backlash. The response is generally dismissive of the idea that any of her past comments were racist. Kutti in response demands Alex's resignation, and reposts (with permission) comments from other OTW volunteers to the same effect.

July 27, 2023: The OTW announces that Board members Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber have resigned from the Board. The post is later edited to add that Alex Tischer has resigned from the Board. There has been no official statement on the cause for any of those resignations, but anonymous users on FFA and users in the OTW comments, some with apparent knowledge of public OTW Slack discussions, speculate that Natalia and Antonius, who were on hiatus, resigned so that the remaining two Board members would have quorum to remove Alex from the Board.

With the withdrawal of Audrey and Emyn, and the resignation of three Board members, the OTW Board election is now uncontested. Barring further withdrawals, all five remaining candidates will be on the new Board.

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

You may have seen talk flying around about drama going down with OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works) and AO3. There isn't a clear write-up of the situation on Tumblr, and since the allegations in this case are serious and OTW Board elections are coming up, I thought there should be a resource for people to get some basic understanding about the events.

This account is a burner, because the topics here are deeply charged, and I don't want to become a character in what's happening. I am not a member of or volunteer for OTW; I am not affiliated with End OTW Racism; I am not affiliated with Dreamwidth; I do not personally know any of the people involved in these events, or have personal knowledge of the events themselves. I am only compiling the publicly available events, allegations, and discussion into a convenient format for Tumblr. I will be heavily referencing the the similar compilation put together by Dreamwidth user Synonymous, but I am not Synonymous, nor do I know who they are. I am not, however, completely without bias; for one thing, I am writing this with the clear understanding that I believe OTW's treatment of its volunteers and policies on content moderation are both deeply troubling. If I did not believe that, I wouldn't have bothered writing this post.

This write-up includes events relating both to allegations about volunteer abuse and improper handling of CSEM moderation by the OTW, and to arguments made about the OTW's handling of racist conduct and about End OTW Racism's ties to the writer known as Stitch. I am including both of these threads because they are deeply related both causally and in the arguments of many of the people involved, and because volunteer abuse, CSEM, and racist harassment are all deeply serious problems.

This situation has not resolved, and therefore you can likely expect more to occur, probably relating to all of those topics. I have not yet decided whether I will continue updating this timeline, but it should at least give you a grounding in what's happening.

Heavy Content Warning for discussions of child sexual abuse material; abuse, harassment, and stalking; and interpersonal and systemic racism. All language in this write-up is non-graphic and high-level, but some links include more detailed descriptions.

The Events

June 24, 2020: In the wake of George Floyd's murder and in response to pressure from people including Black writer Stitch (of the blog Stitch Media Mix and Teen Vogue) and fan studies academic Dr. Rukmini Pande, the OTW makes a statement promising to review their policies and procedures and take steps to protect users from racist harassment. The specific promises they make are:

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

May 7, 2022: The OTW makes a public statement on their website that an unknown attacker has sent CSAM (child sexual abuse material) to some of their volunteers' email addresses, that they are working with authorities to find the attacker, and that response times may be slower than usual, as they have "shut down a number of internal tools" in order to protect their volunteers and the investigation.

May 8, 2022: Dreamwidth cofounder and former head of LiveJournal Trust & Safety Denise (rahaeli on Twitter, synecdochic on Dreamwidth) posts a Twitter thread urging any current or former OTW/AO3 volunteer who has provided the organization with their real-life name ("wallet name") to contact their local police department and let them know that they are at an elevated risk of swatting. She also provides advice on disabling image auto-loading in emails and dealing with trauma and anxiety from being exposed to CSAM, and mentions that she has contacted AO3 to offer help.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

May 10, 2023: The Tumblr account end-otw-racism publishes its first post, End OTW Racism: A Call to Action. In it, the anonymous authors call on the OTW to implement the changes that they promised in 2020, especially:

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

As part of their background establishing the problem of racist abuse and harassment in fandom, they link to several articles written by Stitch on their commentary blog, as well as a couple of posts from other fans. In their FAQs and other posts, the organizers of EOR clarify that they are not calling for the removal of any racist fic, but fic that is written specifically with the intention of perpetrating racist harassment or abuse. They also urge supporters not to berate or harass anyone for disagreeing with or failing to support their campaign.

May 17, 2023: An anonymous user asks about the End OTW Racism protest on the anon-meme Dreamwidth community Fail Fandom_Anon (FFA). As part of a tangent in that discussion, an anonymous former volunteer member of the OTW's Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) mentions that they handled CSEM (child sexual exploitation material) tickets as part of their work, and that the OTW did not provide sufficient resources or expertise in dealing with them either emotionally or logistically. They describe themselves as being traumatized, burned out, and overworked during their time in PAC. They also mention that there was an earlier CSAM attack, targeted only at PAC volunteers, prior to the one that the OTW announced; that they were the volunteer who handled reporting to law enforcement; that the PAC chairs urged Legal and the Board to prepare for more attacks, but that nothing was done; and that the OTW did not provide any mental health resources for volunteers after the CSAM attack. (Here is a link to the user's top-level comment; read down the thread for more.)

May 20, 2023: Dreamwidth user chestnut_pod posts an entry called Be More Democratic, Be More Autocratic, OTW. The thesis of their post is that the OTW fails to adequately respond to racism on AO3 because of structural problems within the organization that amplify biases and make change difficult to achieve, and that in order to address racism and other problems more effectively, the organization should create a clear and straightforward command structure. They also advocate for creating some paid roles within the organization. The comments of the post become a kind of referendum on OTW's organizational policies, and some former volunteers show up to say that chestnut_pod's description of the problems with the org's structure tally with their experience.

May 23, 2023:

An anonymous user links to chestnut_pod's post on FFA. In response, the same former OTW volunteer describes various details of how the Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) made decisions during her time there. (The description covers a lot of comments, so with one exception I'm linking to Synonymous's overview rather than the individual comments, but you can find all of them either through Synonymous's links or by reading down the FFA thread.) The upshot is that PAC often found it difficult to address racism, abuse, and harassment due to roadblocks and micromanagement from OTW's Legal Committee. In particular, the user mentions that they wanted to remove photo manipulations of real-life minors engaging in sex, as well as ambiguously-sourced explicit gifs from underage fics, and were told that they could not by Legal. (I have described the user's objections at as a high a level as possible, but the language used at the link is much more detailed and explicit.) A subsequent, current OTW volunteer says that since the first user left, the policy has changed to allow PAC to remove similar gifs.

Denise leaves a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post saying that the PAC policies described there run counter to industry best practices for Trust & Safety. In response to a commenter asking whether she could advise OTW, Denise says that she has offered several times, and only heard back from the organization once: after she posted her Twitter thread in response to the CSAM attacks, "at which point it immediately became extremely clear the person in question was more interested in protecting the external reputation of the organization than in listening to any advice I had to give and the only reason they'd contacted me was to pressure me to remove my Twitter thread."

In response to Denise's story, Dreamwidth user azarias reveals herself to be the anonymous former PAC volunteer on FFA. In a series of comments on chestnut_pod's post and FFA (bulk of the information in this comment, but see Synonymous's compilation or read up and down the thread for more), she relays the following story: On May 6, 2022, shortly after the CSAM attack, azarias was kicked out of the OTW volunteer Slack with no notice and no communication. When she realized several days later that this was not an organization-wide shut down, she emailed the OTW Board, Legal, and the PAC chairs asking about the situation, and whether she was a suspect in the attack. The chair of Legal, Betsy Rosenblatt, responded, apologizing for the lack of communication and saying that the shut-out was at Legal's request because they thought azarias' account may have been compromised, but she was not a suspect. On July 22, 2022, having heard nothing further from the OTW, azarias emailed again asking about reinstatement, and Betsy responded that they had just that day started that process. (EDIT: Azarias clarifies that her original stated date of July 22 was an error; she checked on her status July 4, and Betsy responded July 6.) All of azarias's accounts had been deleted, so she returned to the OTW with new accounts, and was informed by her PAC chairs that they were not consulted or informed about her suspension until it happened, were not told why she had been suspended, and were ordered not to speak to or about her during the suspension. Due to awkwardness, trauma, and burn-out, azarias quit volunteering soon after.

May 30, 2023:

On FFA, an anonymous OTW volunteer (not azarias) comments that the OTW Board has posted an update to Slack addressing azarias's story (though she is never named in the update). The update confirms that Legal made the decision to suspend azarias, and says that the Board was not consulted on or informed about the decision to either suspend or reinstate her. A statement from Legal is also attached. The statement does not in any way dispute azarias's timeline of events, and outwardly apologizes to her for the distressed caused, but it also contains several strong insinuations that the letter-writer believes that azarias was responsible for the CSAM attack.

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

June 3, 2023: Azarias (now posting under her real account, which FFA allows people who are players in the events being discussed to do) comments on FFA that she has consulted a lawyer regarding Legal's insinuation, and has been advised that she doesn't have anything to worry about, legally. She explains some more of the details behind the situation, and discusses some of her guesses about the current situation at the OTW. (For clarification, the Heidi she's referring to is Heidi Tandy, a longtime member of OTW Legal. During the heights of Harry Potter fandom, Fandom Wank coined the term "Heidipology" to describe what they believed to be Heidi's pattern of making insincere, backhanded apologies.) In the comments, anonymous users discuss the fact that OTW's Legal team is made up entirely of IP lawyers, and not lawyers who have expertise in criminal law, nonprofit governance, or Trust & Safety. (Link goes to Synonymous's compilation.)

June 12, 2023: The OTW publishes a statement addressing the End OTW Racism protest. They thank the organizers for holding them accountable, list the steps they've already taken in addressing racism (mostly muting/blocking abilities and similar), and reiterate that they are working on hiring a diversity consultant and reviewing PAC policies. They also say they will improve transparency and communication.

In the comments, azarias (and several others) push the OTW for a retraction of Legal's letter. Azarias also pushes the OTW to make real progress on racist abuse, rather than paying it "lip service." Azarias reveals that she was the Board's original pick for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer, but dropped out. (Further comments later and earlier at FFA clarify that she dropped out due to the OTW's one name policy, which requires that all work that a volunteer does for the OTW be done under a single name; officers are required to serve under their wallet names, and azarias wanted to do her PAC work under her fandom name and not link that to her wallet name, and when OTW didn't let her, she resigned. Link to Synonymous's more thorough compilation of this story here.)

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

June 15, 2023: Denise posts a thread on Twitter, shortly after compiled on her Dreamwidth, laying out what she consider's the OTW's "absolute failure" at Trust & Safety. Among other things, she claims that:

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

In this post, Denise also elaborates on the story she told in the comments of chestnut_pod's post. She says that in May 2022, before the OTW made its statement about the CSAM attack, several volunteers reached out to her for advice, and she learned that the attack emails included threats to expose identifying volunteer information to, among other places, Kiwi Farms, a site whose users have previously swatted many people. In response to this, after the OTW's statement, she published her Twitter thread advising volunteers to alert their local law enforcement, and also reached out to the OTW to offer resources, contacts, and advice. In response, OTW Legal member Rebecca Tushnet called her and spent half an hour pressuring her to remove her Twitter thread.

At the end of the post, Denise briefly touches on the End OTW Racism action that began this conversation, saying that she appreciates their work, but believes that their proposed solutions will not be effective, both because the OTW's organizational dysfunction makes it impossible for them to moderate racist content, and because PAC must moderate "conduct, not content." She says that she "firmly disagree[s] with the foundational work their campaign was built on."

June 16, 2023:

In response to several people asking for clarification on her statements about End OTW Racism, Denise posts a follow-up Twitter thread (which has not at this time been crossposted to Dreamwidth). She says that a diversity consultant will not effectively address abuse because the current OTW culture is resistant to change, and that reviewing TOS policies will not be effective, because the current TOS already allows for moderation of abusive conduct, but PAC has not been empowered to enforce it. Instead, she claims that progress on moderation of racist abuse can only truly be made once the organization's systemic issues have been addressed. She also believes that End OTW Racism's messaging is counterproductive, "because of its repeated failure to differentiate between content and conduct." In particular, she argues that, "by citing so heavily to the foundational background work by people who *have* repeatedly called for bans on work that 'reflects racist and bigoted stereotypes', and by failing to differentiate the two except in passing, the campaign has positioned itself in such a way that it will be, and I'm certain has already been, dismissed by the OTW." She does not mention Stitch by name, but it is clear by context that it is the citations of Stitch's work that she is referring to.

After someone DMs her to request she take down her clarifying statements about End OTW Racism, and various people supportive of EOR on Twitter denounce the statements, Denise posts a follow-up statement to Dreamwidth and to Twitter. She says that she has been contacted several times over the past few weeks by Black fans who have been harassed and abused by Stitch in racist and racialized ways, and who showed her screenshots of these interactions, which Stitch has since deleted. She says that because these fans are afraid to speak up for fear of further harassment, she offered to relay their concerns about a campaign based heavily on Stitch's writing. She does not provide the screenshots, in order to prevent the fans from being identified. She reiterates that she agrees with Stitch and with EOR that the OTW is failing to respond to racist abuse and harassment, but that she disagrees with their approach and proposals. (For what it's worth, as I said up front, I am not personally acquainted with either Stitch or Denise, and have no personal knowledge of events, but Denise is not the first person to accuse Stitch of racist harassment. There has been a great deal of discussion on FFA, both well-sourced and not so much, detailing Stitch's past behavior. I am linking to this round-up so that people can find it, but with the exception of those that directly link to the evidence, and one or two that reference Stitch's public writing, I do not know the accuracy of any of the claims, and I do not know the source of some of them. The allegations listed also vary wildly in their degree of seriousness, ranging from "actually harassed someone" to "said something distasteful," to "is friends with a known serial stalker and harasser.")

The OTW posts a newspost addressing Denise's original (June 15) thread and allegations. The say that they are in legal compliance with CSEM reporting procedures, that they provided resources to volunteers following the CSAM attacks, and that "the Legal Committee has always worked closely and cooperatively with the Policy & Abuse Committee, and continues to do so." They do not reference azalias's accusations or Denise's claim to have been pressured by Rebecca Tushnet. In the comments, azarias, Denise, and many other users, both anonymous and signed, express outrage at the OTW, and push for answers, apologies, retractions, and in some cases the resignation of Legal and/or the Board.

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

June 16-18, 2023: A group of people on Twitter, Tumblr, and Dreamwidth post individually and in conversation about Denise's comments on Stitch and End OTW Racism, defending Stitch and arguing that Denise's claims about them and disagreement with their and EOR's work are racist, unfounded or overblown, and a derailment from EOR's mission. Some of these are the same people who are in the comments of the OTW's response to Denise, pushing for the OTW to respond to azarias's allegations. (These are not inherently contradictory positions; I just want to note that both the personal and ideological stances here do not necessarily line up neatly into, say, pro-OTW and anti-OTW.) See, for instance, naye's Dreamwidth post, fiercynn's Dreamwidth post, or pearwaldorf's Tumblr post.

June 18, 2023: Denise posts a Twitter thread going into much greater detail about the number of fans of color who reported to her that Stitch had harassed them ("a number greater than five and less than fifteen"), and the severity of their claims ("Several of them said the harassment they experienced was so severe and pervasive that it caused them to change screen names, leave fandom, or otherwise restrict their conduct online.") She also gives a detailed, step-by-step outline of how she went about verifying their claims to her own satisfaction. She continues not to give out identifying details to prevent further harassment.

[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]

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221loislane · 10 months

Note

synonymous here - i did a brief write up/documentation of the dreamwidth comm mess, and thought i'd let you know since someone sent you an ask about it

I'm really thrilled to see this, thank you! I'm also including a link to your transcript of the public Board meeting, since I think that's a really useful resource.

If you're interested in full details of the closing of the OTW Dreamwidth community, you can find them on synonymous's DW post here.

A chat log of the very fraught recent public Board meeting is here.

#i've also gotten asks wondering about coverage of eotwr news and other developments #i would like to write some updates but i've hit a particularly busy irl moment #but i did see the asks and i am working on it

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221loislane · 10 months

Note

Appreciate your compilation and summary of the OTW thing. Have you considered adding to Additional Events the 2 posts on OTW and AO3 with comments locked, and the followup post by Comms to DW about their decision to close it down despite feedback? The "Further Explanation" post. I'm sorry if this is unwelcome in any way. I've bedn following the mess and would like to help others have a good timeline to prevent disinfo/de-contextualizing, if that's even a word.

This is definitely welcome! In the initial timeline, it was already clear which events were important; for real-time updates, I've had to guess, and I'm not sure how I want to handle going back to include information on things that I didn't include in order, but that turn out to be important, because I want to keep the order of events clear. (I still haven't even figured out what information to include about the Board meeting, though clearly some information is necessary.) So if you or anyone else has thoughts about the best way to handle that, you can either reply here, send an ask (which I will answer privately if you want) or send a DM.

In the mean time, I'm going to provide links to the events you've referenced here, so that people can check out what's going on.

June 25, 2023: The OTW announces that it's closing its Dreamwidth announcements comm, despite nearly universal feedback during the comments period that community members wanted it to remain open.

June 26, 2023: The OTW announces the withdrawal of Board candidate Emyn A. in a comments-locked post.

June 27, 2023: The OTW makes a post doubling down on the closure of the Dreamwidth comm, to strong pushback and annoyance from community members.

July 2, 2023: Absolutely disastrous public Board meeting on Discord. (I'm trying to minimize editorializing on this account, but there's really no other way to describe the meeting.)

July 5, 2023: The OTW posts a comments-locked post recruiting volunteers for the Volunteers and Recruiting Committee. (Previous volunteer recruitment posts have not typically been locked.)

#otw #ao3

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221loislane · 10 months

Text

Additional Events (07/02/2023)

July 2, 2023: During the OTW Board's quarterly public meeting on Discord, user impertinence asked whether azarias would be receiving an apology or acknowledgement of her request for a retraction from the Board. Board President Kari Dayton stated that they were "not able to provide answers about this situation due to confidentiality reasons." However, dhobikikutti verified that, "I'm happy to share that Azarias did receive an apology from the Board, and has given me permission to share that information."

In response to this, in FFA, azarias shared the apology email she received from the Board, the email that she sent in response further requesting a retraction of Legal's statement, and the full retraction that the Board and Legal finally posted in the OTW volunteer Slack.

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

The Events

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

May 23, 2023:

May 30, 2023:

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

June 16, 2023:

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]

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221loislane · 10 months

Text

Additional Events (06/26/2023)

June 21, 2023: The OTW publishes a newspost recruiting volunteers for Communications and Tag Wrangling. The initial version of the post contains an acronym for Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics that is also a slur for Australian aboriginal people. After a series of comments calling this out, the acronym is first edited to have slashes in between the letters, and then changed to "Omegaverse."

Several comments also push for answers and communication regarding OTW's treatment of its volunteers.

June 24, 2023: The OTW publishes a newspost urging users to become a member of the OTW in order to vote in the upcoming elections. In the comments, azarias again asks for a retraction of Legal's letter. In response, user dhobikikutti, an AO3 volunteer who recently published an open letter to the OTW demanding an external audit of the structural racism and toxic culture within the organization, clarifies several points, including that "we [volunteers] have been told that Board has been advised to not speak further about your case."

June 25, 2023: The OTW announces that it will inactivate its Dreamwidth account after a comment period (beginning June 10) received only 55 comments. Users in the comments to the post express intense disappointment with this decision, and note that the criteria and instructions for the comment period were unclear, and that the comments that were left were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the account active. They also point to the poor timing of the announcement, given the Dreamwidth cofounder's recent criticisms of the OTW.

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

The Events

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

May 23, 2023:

May 30, 2023:

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

June 16, 2023:

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]

#ao3 #otw

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221loislane · 10 months

Note

If you do update the timeline later, please reblog it so I can see what changed! That was a very comprehensive writeup and I learned a lot, so thanks!

My plan had been to add any updates that I might make to the existing post with clarification that they were later additions, but I've realized that Tumblr read-mores no longer link back to the user's original post, and I would rather not have multiple versions of the original post floating around.

I have added two updates to the timeline in a reblog, which is what I will likely do with any additional updates, unless a better option occurs to me.

#ao3 #otw #ask

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221loislane · 10 months

Text

Additional Events

June 19, 2023: The OTW announces the candidates and platforms for the 2023 Board Election. There are seven candidates for four spots, which means that a majority of the Board will turn over in this election.

Several comments on the post reference concerns about the current Board, including their stances on AI, harassment on AO3, organizational dysfunction, and the treatment of PAC.

(Semi-editorializing note: The post contains a link to a timeline for the elections. There is a public candidate Q&A on June 25, and anyone--even people who aren't OTW members--can submit questions.)

June 21, 2023: Azarias's partner, Dreamwidth user epilogistic, makes a post detailing their reactions to what has happened, and calling for current and former OTW volunteers to publicly speak up about the organization's failings. They stress that they are doing so because they love and believe in OTW, and want it to be able to continue in a healthier manner: "I love that site, flaws and all. But it does have flaws. We need to step past the reflexive urge to say that openly dealing with those flaws is attacking the archive and the org, because otherwise those flaws will never be fixed, and more people will be hurt."

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

The Events

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

May 23, 2023:

May 30, 2023:

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

June 16, 2023:

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]

#otw #ao3

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221loislane · 10 months

Note

(still the july/june anon) also you have your follower list open to the public. since you follow someone other than staff here, you may want to turn off the public setting so your follower list isn't implicated with this account (-ω-)ゝ

Thank you for this and your other ask! (Anon also sent an ask letting me know I had accidentally labeled my update to my write-up as happening in July, not June.) I have corrected both issues. My intention is not to follow anyone with this blog, so I also apologize to the person who I followed accidentally.

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221loislane · 10 months

Text

An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations

The Events

Giving creators more control over the comments on their works.

Improving collection searching and filtering.

Improving admin tools for responding to Policy & Abuse reports.

Reviewing the Terms of Service to potentially allow Policy & Abuse to respond to more kinds of reports.

Reassess the required Archive Warnings and consider adding more.

Continue working on user muting and blocking.

They also say that they are considering "reaching out to an external contractor or partnering with an advocacy group," i.e., a diversity consultant, to help with reforms.

August 8, 2021: As part of their July newsletter, the OTW announces that it is creating a new officer role in the organization to research options for diversity consultants.

June 16, 2022: As part of their April newsletter (delayed several months due to the CSAM attack), the OTW announces that a Diversity Consultant Research Officer has been appointed.

Hiring a diversity consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Updating their harassment policies and protocols to address on-site and off-site coordinated harassment.

Creating a content policy for content that is abusive in a racist manner.

May 23, 2023:

May 30, 2023:

In response to this letter, Denise posts a statement on Dreamwidth and Twitter recommending that any person currently volunteering for the OTW should resign for their own personal safety.

Also in the comments, several users respond to the OTW's statement by posting racist abuse and racial slurs. The OTW leaves the comments up for several days before finally screening them.

Photomanips of minors in sexual situations, "however terrible or obvious the Photoshop job is, qualifies under the third definition of 'child pornography' as given in 18 USC §2256(8)(C)."

She believes that the OTW may not be in compliance with legal obligations to preserve information about reported CSEM, due to its policy of deleting author information about orphaned works.

June 16, 2023:

End OTW Racism posts a statement acknowledging the OTW's acknowledgment, and calling for supporters to donate to the OTW so that they can vote in the upcoming Board elections.

[Updated June 19, 2023 to correct language around the attack on OTW, which was a CSAM attack, not a CSEM attack.]

#otw #ao3 #organization for transformative works #archive of our own #abuse #harassment #racism #cw csem

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