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OTW board elections are ongoing! If you are qualified, you should read over the candidate info and vote!

Also, I've been following some of the discussion about one of the candidates, and my main question doesn't seem to be getting answered: How does it work for somebody in a country where AO3 is banned to be running for the AO3 board from that country under her real name (while working for that country's government!) It's legal for foreign nationals to be on the board of US nonprofits, and it's one thing to volunteer through a proxy and a pseud, but...? Surely this is a terrible idea for her? And surely it's not a good idea for the nonprofit to put her in an official position where she's obligated to break her country's laws without some kind of extra protection for her?

Like, sure, fundamentally the OTW is taking the position that they will defend fans against fandom-related legal issues, but it's one thing to say we're willing to defend an EU creator's rights lawsuit, it's another thing entirely to say we're ready to take on the Great Firewall for you. (Have they said they're willing to take on the Great Firewall for her?) What am I missing?

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Huh, is she actually in mainland China, rather than being a Chinese speaker active in Chinese fandom?

I am unclear on that (and deliberately haven't looked at any OTW-internal stuff on the candidates) but a lot of people posting about her seem to be sure she is, both in English spaces and in the stuff I've seen translated from Weibo. She definitely said that 'AO3 is banned in her country', and as far as I know the PRC is the only Chinese-speaking country where that's true. And I feel like if she was an expat we would be hearing different things (especially: differently-angled complaints about her from the Weibo fans.)

But I don't understand how anybody thinks it's a good idea for her to run for the Board if that's true! When I originally read the interview excerpts that were going around I thought she was from, idk, Turkey or somewhere that iirc had a temporary ban a few years ago. But with more info, she is definitely talking about the Chinese ban when she talks about her country.

Edited 2022-08-13 23:13 (UTC)

I don't think referring to it as "her country" is conclusive, and the people on Weibo might be mistaken? Idk. But yeah, as you say, I don't see how it could be a good idea for her to run if she is living there ...

Maybe? It seems like a relevant detail to share when her main platform is about fandom in "her country" if she doesn't live there, and there's nothing in her bio or interviews to hint she doesn't live there (even, apparently, to Weibo fans who might be better at picking up prc-specific circumlocutions.) If she is an expat, she seems to be deliberately giving the impression she isn't.

There is also what appears to be a group post on Tumblr from several Chinese fans who strongly disagree with everything she says and say that she works for the government. They are concerned that if she is elected to the board she would get her hands on their information and cause problems for them. I can't say their fears are faulty if she works for that government, all things considered.

I think that is very, very unlikely since (as other people have said) AO3 doesn't have that info, getting someone elected to the Board wouldn't get them access even if they did, and they have easier ways of getting that information if they really wanted even if this method worked. But I understand why Chinese fans would be paranoid about it.

But if she was actually doing this as as part of a secret government plot, why the hell would she say she works for the government?

That said - I don't think it's entirely impossible that she's under the impression that she is doing this because the government would want her to, without actually being in cahoots with anyone. There does seem to have recently been a push from people within the establishment there toward building Chinese influence in international fandom, as evidenced by the winning Chinese Worldcon bid last year which definitely had the government among its backers. This makes sense both as part of the PRC's really big push over the last decade or so toward 'soft' power and cultural influence outside China, and as part of the huge amount of influence fandom has *within* China; if they were smart enough to see the possibilities why would they not? And that's not necessarily nefarious unless you're feeling xenophobic anyway; China has a lot of fans, they should have a lot of influence in international fandom; a good government would be supportive of them.

So I don't think it's impossible that some of the rumors about secretly government-run accounts backing her on twitter are true; if someone whose job was to build Chinese cultural influence in international fandom notices her running, they might add her to a list of people to support. (Which still doesn't mean she's not in danger from running! Believing that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing or that policy will ever be consistent is never safe.)

in the candidate chats she said 'in my home country' everywhere i saw it mentioned, so hard to say if she lives in her home country or not.

It's interesting that, at least as far as I read, Natalia is the only candidate who actually named her home country (even though I suspect at least one of the others is also outside the us/uk.) I wonder why!

the xenophobia is strong sometimes. :/

Do you have any idea where the info about her allegedly working for the Chinese government is coming from?

She says on her first candidate post that she works for a government agency.

If she's not resident in the PRC it would probably be a different government. (but if she's in the PRC and working for a foreign government that seems like an even bigger risk for her!)

Ah, that's what I get for being lazy and asking when I haven't reviewed the candidate posts. I know a lot more about the situation in, say, Iran than China, but that in particular makes the information she's given pretty eyebrow raising. It's not that unusual for people to have real name accounts on banned websites in many countries and most people don't see any consequences for it (although that's different from running for the board of a banned organization under it), but if she's not just a government employee but publicizing that fact, that's something else? I'd expect the government to actively care about *that* a lot more actively than citizen number whatever breaking the internet rules.

On the other hand, I suppose we might not have public confirmation if AO3 had, say, okayed her running under a pseudonym. And there *are* generally foreign government organizations with approval to operate; if she works for, idk, a foreign government-sponsored research organization or she's some kind of local staff attached to an embassy or something that would be a strangely misleading way of phrasing it, but it's not impossible.

Anyway it sounds to me like either the information presented to the public is at best very misleading (possibly justifiable for obscuration purposes but not the most helpful thing for winning an election), she's making a very unwise decision (which I could respect, but in this case as far as I can tell there *isn't* a clear reason to make a stand connecting her real identity to AO3), or both.

No, that's fair, I haven't read all the candidate posts either once I knew who I was voting for. And some of the Weibo posts use a less Westernized name for her alongside the one she's running under; I don't know if they actually know what they're talking about or if that ones a fan pseud, though. The serving under your legal name thing is a legal requirement for the Org, though, they don't have the power to waive it, even if she's running under a pseud if she wins she'll have to drop it.

I think there is a tendency for fans from Western democracies to overestimate the risks for fans in countries with heavy censorship, but I think there's also a tendency for fans from those countries to underestimate the risks (as demonstrated by the fact that the Chinese fans that started the AO3 reporting campaign seemed genuinely shocked that the whole website got banned.) And there's also a tendency I think for Western fans to believe that censorship doesn't really work, and most of the people on the ground know how their country really works - which. Most *Western* fans don't know how their country really works. And every country, regardless of their government, has a leopards-eating-faces party and supporters who will swear it doesn't mean *their* face until they're going into reconstructive surgery.

The truth of how much risk she's under is probably in between somewhere. And yeah, probably it's fine, but she'll be high-profile enough, and it would look bad enough, that it seems like all it would take is one pissed-off fan in a shipwar reporting her, and that's going to go differently than somebody SWATing an American board member. I'd have liked at least some kind of acknowledgement that she's running different legal risks than previous board members, and the OTW won't be able to give her the same kind of legal support as it might other board members, and how both she and the OTW are planning around that.

I haven't read all statements that extensively since I'm not a member, but from the quotes I have seen from her in various reaction posts, I'm not sure that she has thought through her candidacy from any number of angles (like whether it's a good idea to run for board when still fairly new to an organization even independent ftom any policy positions). And it seems sadly plausible to me that the OTW only provides feedback on whether it would be an issue for the org itself not the candidate, and that they expect candidates to evaluate that aspect. And young adults in particular aren't the best or mist cautious at risk assessments.

I feel like it would also be an issue for the org if a Board member got in legal trouble with China as a result of serving on the Board though???

I agree with you that I would not be surprised if Elections asked the same basic question they ask everyone about are you aware you will have to serve under your legal name and you may be at risk and didn't follow up any farther. But it really seems like they should have at least checked in with Legal, since I don't think this situation has come up before. I would like to at least feel like somebody else has asked these questions before we got this far. :(

I suppose the best case scenario is that she, from being in the tech sector (iirc), has a realistic assessment of being involved with a foreign org that has a webservice that is blocked? Like afaik Google (or I guess "Alphabet") has employees in the PRC even though some of their services are blocked. Obviously something like Google also has rather more capacity to deal with problems.

Based admittedly more on the OTW's public "vibes" than anything else I have to admit that I wouldn't assume that the org has the expertise and resources to help candidates outside the US to judge their personal circumstances and to give useful advice on whether a prominent position might have consequences.

They've had Board members from a lot of different countries, but I don't think ever from a country with more restrictive internet than the UK or Australia, so yeah. I don't think Tiffany has much chance of winning short of some kind of massive ballot-stuffing conspiracy theory, so it's probably academic, but maybe this is something Elections should think harder about going forward.

They've had a board member from Turkey before but she managed her own safety very carefully.

Edited 2022-08-14 16:58 (UTC)

Ok, that's reassuring to know. Do you know if AO3 was banned in Turkey at the time? IIRC it was banned and then unbanned there, I think? (That's why I first assumed Tiffany was from Turkey.)

I don't think it was at the time but I can't remember the timing of the ban.

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Yeah, I wish I had a better understanding of this! (Or that I had some confidence Legal had clarified it with Elections first.)

I suppose it's not impossible she does have, or could get, government permission - separate from any paranoid conspiracies about censorship or privacy, see the recent Worldcon vote; at least someone in the Chinese government seems to have decided that greater visibility in international fandom is good for China, and they're probably not wrong!

The impression I got was "is from China; not necessarily currently in China." And "works for a gov't agency" is fairly meaningless: that applies to all public schoolteachers in the US.

(Some of the bits from Weibo seem to say that she's more directly connected than that, but I've picked that up third-hand from translations, so I don't know what to think of it.)

I didn't think the OTW said it will defend fans' legal rights to creativity in Europe - just that it's sympathetic, and will try to understand the legal issues and advise if possible. They're only directly tackling legal issues in the US, where the servers are hosted.

I expect it's a non-issue, though; I don't expect her to be elected.

I don't know if OTW has defended any individual fans outside the US (they don't publicize those kinds of cases as much, for good reason) but they've sent briefs and policy feedback letters everywhere from New Zealand to Singapore. And there've been EU (or at least pre-brexit UK) lawyers heavily involved since the beginning, so I'd be shocked if not. But OTW's general position is that the stuff they do is legal (or at least pale grey) and they don't advocate people unambiguously breaking local laws, even if those laws are evil. It seems like a step beyond that to have someone on the board who is, just by using the site. But maybe I'm misunderstanding how illegal it actually is.

Regardless of all the trappings around where she is and where she works, that doesn't matter to my vote as much as her general inexperience in fandom and the fact that her view of the archive and her philosophies on the archive are fundamentally at odds with mine. In her own words without needing any interpretation or speculation on my part, she lost my vote.

I actually don't think some of her general ideas are that bad once you figure out what she's actually advocating for, and some of her problem with expressing them is probably language/culture barriers which shouldn't be a dealbreaker (I've seen Chinese fans - who aren't pro-Tiffany in general - pointing out that a lot of the stuff that's worrying Western fans is the sort of things you say in the PRC as sort of autopilot ideologically correct filler and nobody assumes you mean it.) But yeah in general I don't think she has the experience or wider knowledge of the org that she'd need. I think it's good that they expanded eligibility to all volunteers, but maybe nine months is too short.

Edited 2022-08-15 00:59 (UTC)

I have to admit, the candidate in question seemed to me to be firstly, very young and enthusiastic (both desirable qualities in a volunteer - whether they're admirable qualities in a board member is a different question), and secondly, rather inexperienced and lacking in perspective about issues she wasn't directly involved in (both of which are understandable consequences of being young, and neither of which are desirable qualities in a board member). So she was landing near the bottom of my list for those reasons alone. Mix in the fact she's lacking a lot of important context about the history of AO3 and the OTW, plus the lack of clear aims and priorities aside from one highly unlikely one (getting AO3 un-banned in the PRC isn't going to happen short of a major miracle from quite a number of deities) and yeah... chuck her back for another decade or so to grow some more, she's nowhere near ready to handle the job.

Yeah, if this doesn't scare her out of the Org entirely, and if the legal issues with her government really aren't an issue, I'd like to see her run again with another three years or so of Org experience.

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