Fandom sharing and privacy

[melannen]

Let's just. Anyway, it's March now! March again.

I am officially on the federal grand jury now. The 'alternate' thing lasted less than a week, somebody else managed to weasel out really fast. I can't really talk about it though! So that's going to be a big thing in my life for the next year+ that I can't talk about. (I think it's going to be a good experience though, I'm glad I could do it, and for all the long commitment much less stress than a petit jury.)

Let's talk about not talking about things instaed!

I had the impression that - at least in my DW-y corner of fandom - there was a pretty standard ethic of respecting other people's level of comfort with being public about their fanstuff, and that I was more or less aligned with it. But I keep stumbling over things and going 'oh…. I guess that's not as universal as I thought.' So I've been meaning to talk about this anyway.

I had to sort of codify my own ethical feelings on this a bit when I did the big recs project! What was my line on stuff it was OK to rec and not OK to rec? When am I 'breaking privacy' vs. 'bringing light to a forgotten work'?

What I basically worked out for myself was:

1. If it's up somewhere on the internet that is public and that the author presumably consented for it to be there, and there is nothing on that specific site asking that it not be shared, I will happily link to it, recommend it, or talk about it publicly. This includes things like AO3, Open Doors imports to AO3, personal websites, old handcoded archives, and unlocked social media. (This also includes Tumblr, even if the OP is deleted, if you posted on Tumblr you knew it would be out of your control after the first reblog.)

2. If it's up somewhere on the internet but only on sites that are sort of public but that the author did not explicitly consent to (like wayback, various other sites that let you archive a copy of a site, or unauthorized uploads or reposts) I will talk about it publicly, possibly in enough detail to make it possible for other people to find it, but I will not link to it. If someone can hunt it up on wayback themself, they presumably have some context as to why it isn't available anymore, but posting an actual wayback link seems like actively refuting the author's control of their own work. The exception is if I know for a fact the author does not want it shared, and then I will treat it as locked. I will never deliberately get a fanwork put on any public archive, including wayback, if it is not already there, without the creator's consent.

3. If it's up on the internet but only under lock, including AO3 lock, I will not talk about or rec it anywhere public, unless the author has given explicit permission. I assume if it's locked they don't want a casual google to turn up even its existence. I may still vaguely reference its existence, but not in a way where someone who didn't have access to the lock could connect it to a specific title or creator. Unless the author has requested a higher level of privacy I will still talk about it, rec it, or link it under lock or in a private chat or at a con etc if I feel like the people in the lock can get access and share my feelings on fandom privacy (which is part of why I'm trying to get a handle on other people's feelings…)

4. If it's up publicly but with a request not to share (like disabling the share button on AO3), I will treat it like it's locked.

5. If it's not up on the internet at all, I will happily pass around scans or downloads in private or in person. I will not post links to them in public unless the creator has okay'd it, and whether I will talk about them in detail or mention the existence of scans or downloads in public depends on what I know about the history of the thing.

6. If something is not online anywhere I can access and I am aware the creator has requested that this come down and not be shared, I will honor it in public, and mention the request if it's being discussed in private. (If the creator has left other requests I try to honor those too.)

7. I will not publicly repost anyone else's fanwork, beyond the headers and a sentence or two/tiny thumbnail, without their permission.

8. I will happily read, hunt down, or save a private copy of anything with no guilt whatsoever. Me reading and hoarding it is different than telling all the admiring bog!

ETA 9. This all assumes I am posting (even if it's publicly googleable) to a mostly-fannish audience and in the context of the fandom gift economy. If I'm posting on a forum about truck repair, standards will be different. And if you're taking out of the gift economy - if I'm talking to a professional reporter, or if it's going into an academic paper for a pay journal and/or someone's career advancement - it's out the window and you get permission from effing *everybody* before you talk about them. 'I want you to share' is not the same as 'I give you permission to exploit for your own gain'. (Meanwhile, if you have sold publishing rights to a work for money, it goes in the 'pro writer' ethical category and not the 'fanworks' one.)

The lines between these sometimes get wobbly, especially with older works - if it's locked on AO3 but still up on a defunct archive where you can't contact the admins, does it count as public with the author's consent? Is something like oocities or an automated mailing list archive in the Open Doors category or the Wayback category? If it's locked now but it wasn't until recently and it's had a big effect on the fandom while it was public, do I treat it the same as always locked? Is there a distinction between passing around old zines and passing around CC .pdfs? Does sharing a huge zipped compilation of many files without a googleable index count as sharing a file publicly? But I can make a call on the merits on most of those and I usually feel ok with what I decide.

The one exception I would make is if there's libel afoot - if someone is spreading harmful or malicious lies that can be defanged by, say, posting a wayback link, that's a different situation. (I still wouldn't break lock though. There might be a line where I'd intentionally break lock but if so I can't think of one? Maybe if someone was plotting like, actual physical assault. Otherwise I'm more likely to just get myself locked out.) Just plain 'it's for the historical record' is never good enough.

(I do of course also sometimes mess up and not notice that something is locked or post an old link that I didn't realize had come down, but we're only human, mostly.)

What are your lines? Have you ever worked out exactly where they are?

p.s. if somebody decides it's a good idea to repost this or its comments in full to fanlore I will come to your house, go into your dreams, and remove your sense of irony with a rusty spoon

Comments

[petra]

This post made me realize I just linked to a story that has the share function disabled on AO3, a choice on the author's part which baffles me a bit. I'm not sure what the point of posting a story publicly is if not to share it.

I have been known to pass around HTML copies of stories since stripped from the internets, but I would never post, "Hey, anybody who wants a copy of this DCU fanfic from 2005, email me!" because that would feel like usurping the author's right to take it down.

I find this an interesting post as I had not contemplated the ethics of my choices.

[china_shop]

This seems about right. Except, like petra, I'm a bit vague on linking to things where the share function is disabled. Idk if I always get that right.

I keep forgetting that some people choose to take down their fanworks, so although I don't post links to the wayback machine because it never occurs to me to look there, I also don't find such links jarring if they're to old fanfics. Unless I've heard the author has deliberately tried to remove their existence from the 'net, I tend to assume old fanfics have just fallen through the gaps between platforms.

Also I recently linked to a public DW post that, if I hadn't found it through a newsletter feed thingy, I would have asked first before linking to it, but I figured that since that newsletter feed had already linked, my own linking wouldn't make any difference. \o?

[ratcreature]

Hmm, I feel like the AO3 kind of lock that just requires and account but offers no control over who sees it beyond them having an account isn't the same as a DW lock that actually allows you to control the audience. In the fanart rec community I mod, I allow public recs to art that requires an account to see (though entirely public is preferred) as long as the site is open membership like on dA or AO3 or such, but not to art that is locked on DW.

Iirc there have been a few recs pointing to dA mature art that you can't see without an account, and nobody seemed to have an issue with the rec being public here on DW.

[bemused_writer]

I find fic with the Wayback Machine tricky. I've backed up my own stories on it and I have backed up others in the past. Would I link a deleted story that's on the Wayback Machine only? Probably not, but I might share it with people privately if they asked for it. I feel like with Wayback it's kind of good to assume anything you put out there will wind up on that site since it's, well, how it works. Not to mention most sites let you download a story and all that. I'm not sure I really have a point with this exactly, but it's something I've thought about. Maybe fic shouldn't be backed up there and simply downloaded. Something I'll consider.

Everything else I completely agree with. Once there's an actual request on the author's part I feel like that trumps everything else including the Wayback Machine.

[princessofgeeks]

This sounds very much like my rules too.

[author_by_night]

I want to be crystal clear on what you're talking about, because I'm not sure I am. At first I thought you meant reccing is bad. Re-reading, I think you're talking about actually reposting? So if you wrote a fic here, and I reposted it on Ao3? I agree that would be unethical, even if I said "melannen on DW posted it." If that's what you're talking about. You did not give your permission.

I honestly think you just don't repost people's work for them unless they ask. Even if they posted it 20 years ago on a now-defunct archive. I would be horrified if someone posted my old work onto Ao3 for me. I've posted some older work there. I made the decision to do so, however.

I think linking and reccing is fine, though! But of course don't reveal RL identities if you're aware of them.

[misbegotten]

On the whole, I agree with your takes. I'm still confuzzled by AO3 choices, though. I know some people don't like the formatting of the share function on AO3 and I always assumed that was why they had disabled sharing? But your interpretation ("treat it as locked") makes more sense... in that I still don't understand why anyone would post to AO3 but not want people to link to it. I'm guilty of recommending stories that have had the sharing button disabled. Sigh.

I will happily read, hunt down, or save a private copy of anything with no guilt whatsoever.

Indeed!

[wyld_dandelyon]

I like how you break this down. I suspect the result is behavior that almost everybody will find polite and respectful.

It is very similar to my policy of being willing to share lyrics to a filk with other filkers in some private manner (like e-mail), but not to post it on the internet. If the author put it there, I'll share a link; if I don't have a link to a public sharing made by the author, I stick to private sharing.

I also approve of at least thinking about whether it is appropriate to link to the wayback if a person is trying to rewrite history for some unethical purpose (including gaslighting). I certainly wouldn't do it lightly! But sometimes when a person has a pattern of behavior that hurts people, it falls under the "if you don't want people to talk about you doing a thing, don't do it" rule. But the post in question would have to be pertinent, and fanfic generally isn't.

[kore]

This is interesting!....

I don't think I've ever thought twice about linking to an archive-locked fic on AO3, probably because most of mine are locked due to old e-stalkers. I've seen lots of people link to fics with the share button disabled, too -- they either copy the typical format or flat out say "no share button." I've also seen people link to waybacked fics (and posts, and websites, and whatever) all the time. I remember people linking to their locked fics on LJ comms -- the old "add me and you get access to the fic," &c &c. I have definitely seen people grab fics that were about to be taken down so they could be circulated privately. I don't think I ever thought about any of this in terms of ethics, except Open Doors makes me a little easy because what if the author originally didn't want their fic anywhere but that site? Or they don't want it up anymore and didn't realize it was still there? But there's that prevalent attitude of "you put it on the internet, if you didn't want it available forever you shouldn't have done that, and there's no real way to delete or hide what you publicly posted."

But what Fanlore has been doing really pisses me off, I think because that's mostly personal entries from like 10 years ago that people probably never thought would be read by anyone other than their flist, much less scraped and put up on a wiki. That seems more like what happened with Yahoo Groups when some people got really unhappy their IRL personal info was going to be available (from what I remember), although it wound up on wayback anyway.

[caramarie]

I didn't even realise the share button could be disabled on AO3 till quite recently! And tbh even having noticed it, it would not have occurred to me to treat that as a 'do not link' signal, and I have linked to fic with the button disabled.

I would also be happy to link to archive-locked things (although certainly not DW-locked things!) I do post some RPF archive-locked, which for me is more just about keeping a layer of separation there – I guess I would think of it as a signal to be *careful* about where you talk about it, but not as a private-discussions-only type thing.

But re: wayback, reposting reposting etc my lines would be the same as yours.

(I do have my DW set not to be google-indexed, which probably affects how I think of it as a space too!)

[thawrecka]

I can see why you would feel that way about AO3 lock, but I have to admit I archive-lock all my RPF just because there are so many people so loud about the idea that all fic writers should archive-lock their terrible filthy RPF because what if the subjects of the fic find it & etc. etc., but I would not care if people talked about my RPF on a public post. (Most of my RPF is G-rated fic about Japanese people so I am not worried about them finding it. I am just bending to pressure to archive-lock.)

[out_there]

To be honest, most of those seem eminently reasonable. I haven't stopped to formalise my approach, but respecting a locked post and publically sharing the ones that are available make a lot of sense.

Honestly, I haven't worried about the share button on AO3 being disabled when the work is publically available. But then again, I'm only sharing recs on DW so it's not exactly a huge, public forum.

[eleanorjane]

I tend to agree with your approach and I tend to follow those sorts of principles myself. The major difference is around AO3 fics with the Share button disabled - I haven't come across this yet, but if I did and there was no context/guidance in the author notes, I'd probably still feel fine to share the links openly in fannish spaces. I'm not a hardliner about "don't post if you wouldn't be okay with it being on the NYT", but I do feel that fundamentally if I post something publicly, I can't then tell people they're morally obligated not to share the link with anyone else.

[vriddy]

Interesting thoughts!! I definitely never paid attention to the Share button before making a rec. Poking around, it seems like it's a setting that can only be disabled at the account level, not work level? I wonder if people disable it mostly to avoid rapid propagation to Twitter/Tumblr, or if maybe they didn't really know what the checkbox did the first time they looked at the preferences and never went back later. It'd be interesting to find out the reasoning!

[schneefink]

My vague rules are similar, except for AO3 fic: I never pay attention to the share button (tbh I mostly forget it exists, and I'd completely forgotten that it was even possible to disable it), and I would rec an archive-locked fic (I can't remember rn if I have but probably.) I only post recs on DW and I just sorta assume that pretty much everyone who reads it here has an AO3 account, so I'm not pointing people who that lock was meant to keep out (non-fannish people) towards the fic. I wouldn't rec an archive-locked fic e.g. in a non-explicitly-fandom-fannish Discord channel.
Thinking about it, it hasn't come up but for fic with a cautionary note (along the lines of "if you are or know X then turn back!" which I've seen for non-locked RPF sometimes) I think I might rec it but only in very vague terms. And of course I wouldn't rec a fic that asked not to be shared in a way I would notice, so in the tags or author's notes, but I've never seen that.

[umadoshi]

I share links to fanwork so sporadically that I've never really worked out my lines for doing so. This was a fascinating read!

As a personal data point, as of a couple years go, I've got all of my Explicit fic on AO3 restricted to archive members solely because there was a reasonable chance that people would be looking me up online for very non-fannish reasons and it's incredibly easy to find my fic that way. (I didn't extend that to tracking down and limited access to my E-rated fic here or on my long-neglected personal fic site, though.) So in my case, I have no problem at all with anyone mentioning or linking to the fic I've got locked down, since it'd presumably be in a fannish context, not some random person stumbling over it.

I'd be interested to know other people's reasons for locking fic down, and I suspect I'm in the minority with mine, since most people don't have their wallet name so closely associated with their fannish stuff.

I'm also curious about why people choose to switch off the Share option on AO3, which simply isn't something I'd ever thought about before. I'm not actually sure I'd previously noticed that that was an option.

[esteefee]

I have mixed feelings about fic that was once posted publicly (no locks, posted on AO3 or some other public archive like 852prospect) that authors then try to retract. I'm sorry if they want to pull their gift retroactively but eh. I'm okay with sharing it amongst my friends.

Thanks for bringing this up!

[jesse_the_k]

Today I learned about AO3 lock and I'm mystified.

I appreciate that seeing the blue lock icon on AO3 signals something useful to you. (I've never used the Share button so it never sent me a message.)

I'm grateful that my DW lock actually prevents people outside that access filter from seeing the post, and the people on the access filter are folks who I believe will respect that lock.

But why do people think "locking to the archive" means any kind of protection? Creating an AO3 account doesn't require a certification of approval from the fannish overlords. If someone wants to find, say, all the RPF so they can make a stink about it -- why would making an AO3 account be a barrier?