Bio
Tiffany G first noticed fan art when she was watching Digimon as a kid. Later in life, she started reading and creating fanfiction on a variety of topics including movies, arts, history, games, and many more. One of her favorite books is the Legend of Galactic Heroes. It gives her a lot of inspiration in digital arts, writings and political views.
Besides OTW, she is very active in volunteer work. She has served in the student association of her university and is also currently a board member of her local community center. After university, she has worked in the software industry and public services. At present, she is working as a technical support person in a governmental organization.
Platform
1. Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
I decided to run for the election as I feel there is a lack of representation of members from Asian countries. Asian members have been really valuable and significant to the Organization of Transformative Works and should be represented more properly. Other than that, I have been using AO3 for ten years. I spend time reading and writing fanfiction whenever I feel lonely. It is a place that means a lot to me. I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to contribute.
Besides this, I believe that more people are dependent on the internet nowadays and this trend has increased since the pandemic started. I want to make our community a more genuine and welcome place.
2. What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
As a person who works in the IT sector, I am very detail-oriented and curious about the newest technology. I believe that technology can play a vital role in aiding the organization to grow in the future. I have some ideas that could help make this organization’s projects be more accessible to everyone.
I have also had a variety of volunteer and leadership experiences helping underprivileged groups in my local community. I am certain that the the crucial skills that I have learned during these activities, such as, empathy and teamwork, will be useful in my potential upcoming role.
3. Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
I wish to expand the accessibility of fanworks. In my teenage years, I always felt uncomfortable telling other people I wrote fanfiction. Besides that, I struggled to find a community where I could read and write fanfiction. I felt awkward asking people what they shipped and where they read or wrote fanfiction. Luckily, I was able to find AO3, and this place means a lot to me and many other users. In order to achieve this goal, I will support the work of Accessibility, Design, & Technology Committee, Policy & Abuse Committee, and the Support committees, as well as determine ways to enable future growth and prosperity of this organization.
4. What is your experience with the OTW’s projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
I am most familiar with AO3, our fanfiction archive. As a member of the Support Committee, our responsibilities overlap a little with Policy & Abuse Committee’s responsibilities I understand the struggle of both committees to resolve all the issues we have encountered so far. To help our non-English speaking users, we also work with the Translation committee most of the time. I also look forward to figuring out a more efficient way to address issues non-English users have.
I learned about some struggles the Accessibility, Design, & Technology Committee are currently having, and I would like to be involved to work towards a solution. I firmly believe the advancement of technology will make fanfiction more accessible to all people, regardless of where they are located and what languages they speak.
5. How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?
I currently have responsibilities with Support and Tag Wrangling. We have never been really busy. With recruits coming in, our workload will be reduced further, which will give me more time and energy to focus on the Board work. Time management is not a big issue for me as multitasking is an extremely valuable skill I have learned in school and I am very proficient at it.
Dolores Umbridge trying to infiltrate AO3 and censorship everything, nice try.
Did they change something here? I don’t see anything about censorship or ratings?
It’s in her interview.
Where can I find this?
I WILL HAVE ORDER!
I’m would prefer not to engage in the discourse on the Aug 5th thread, but I came here from there and I hope someone reads this, and can grasp some of the nuance behind the controversy.
I completely understand why Tiffany G is a candidate this year. The way she is being taken and treated by users is testament to how OTW is frustratingly (if understandably) EN-centric, and why steps should be taken to diversify the board and OTW.
I saw several comments going along the lines of: Tiffany G should learn fandom history and join the community before trying to become a board member of OTW. Which is, ironically, precisely the displacement and utter disconnect that OTW is trying to fix, and that Tiffany G becoming a board member might contribute to fixing. English is not the official language of AO3. Yes, it is the main language, and EN fandom occupies AO3 to a great extent, but no language is a foreign language. Tiffany G is quite clearly coming from the CN fandom (and I understand this may not be eminently visible to non-CN language users), from an internet space where fandom culture, history, and accepted attitudes are completely different.
For example, there is a huge difference between EN “antis” and CN users speaking the standard lines on banned or illegal content. Naturally, without clarification it is difficult for an English speaker to grasp the context Tiffany G is speaking from–which is not to say her opinions are correct or should be supported. But perhaps the interests of the growing CN userbase /will/ initially appear to compete with the EN userbase in certain areas, but it is not simply a matter of whose interests are “correct”. Tiffany’s opinions do not make her an “anti”, at least not in the same vein of what we mean in an EN fandom space.
I do completely disagree with Tiffany G’s idea on the fundamental purpose behind AO3. But if not for that, she would have been the strongest candidate to me and the one who represented my interests the most. I would certainly love it if the OTW put additional resources into the inclusion and development of non-English userbases on AO3, and I am interested in what her POV would bring to the table. For example, while CN remains a minority language on AO3 at present, the CN userbase is growing quite large–and yet everything about it is still very new and heterogeneous.
There really is a need to develop more culture, knowledge and accessibility around AO3 and its usage for CN users, because the way CN users use AO3 is fundamentally different from the culture/standard that EN fandom has developed over the past decade. For example, many Chinese authors do not tag their works to the standard expected on EN works, because they use AO3 only as a repository for chapters that can be linked to on their native social media platform (picture someone sharing a fic they wrote by sending a pastebin raw link). This means the experience of a Chinese reader who wants to filter for fic on AO3 will be markedly less rich than the experience of an English reader, as many fics are simply not tagged for the fandom/characters/tropes that they belong to.
But perhaps there is no fundamental right or wrong about this–the fandom culture that certain people are coming from, and the purpose they come to AO3 for, is just different. But I hope it can be changed in the future so more Chinese readers can come to AO3 and find use in its excellent tagging system.
Generally I just think the vitriol Tiffany G has received is unreasonable, but I also believe it is based on misunderstanding–and again, based on the EN-if-not-US centrism that led to it. Regardless of how the election turns out, I appreciate Tiffany G running for the board this year and take it as a sign of OTW’s continued dedication to working with and expanding its non-English spaces.
This is not an EN-centric issue.
The concern here is that Tiffany has expressed sentiment for wanting to implement censoring and impose those standards onto Ao3.
Ao3 was formed following censorship measures and subsequent story-deletion on other major fanfic sites. When people say “Tiffany G should learn fandom history” I can almost guarantee that this is the history they are referring to. This is the outcome that people who do know fandom history want to avoid.
Yes! I definitely acknowledge the concerns present and how damning they are, I just think that the people attacking her are doing it from the wrong angle, and most commenters are assuming things about her without understanding her context and history. So one thing is Tiffany G clearly does know her own fandom history: CN fandom history, where AO3 was banned several years ago and lots of fanworks and content was deleted on mainland platforms.
There was a portion of CN fandom whose takeaway from that was “ok, I’ll quit writing banned content so my stuff doesn’t get removed in the future, and I’ll join platforms which are respectable and have the least likelihood of being taken down”. Obviously I don’t think that adhering to censorship is the correct takeaway, but it IS more or less a standard opinion on domestic sites (it can’t be helped). In EN spaces, it’s totally different: “antis” might be loud but they’re only a very vocal minority.
Although the main and most damning counter point to this is: Tiffany G’s ideas about censorship might represent a portion of the voter base on a domestic mainland site, but she’s hardly representative any of the CN userbase on AO3. Most people who climb the wall to access AO3 aren’t exactly stringent about recreating the conditions behind the wall on the foreign internet (especially considering AO3’s nonexistent chances of ever being unbanned in China). And people behind the wall clearly would not care for AO3’s ToS since they cannot access AO3 anyway.
Though… one final thing… it is a little unrelated to the issue at hand, but I personally find Tiffany G’s self-contradictory statements to be suggestive of the difference in fandom and internet culture between EN and CN, and not immediate evidence of “hypocrisy” or a lot of the other things that I saw people saying about her.
Despite stating that she wanted to improve AO3’s respectability and enforce more standards to prevent “illegal” content, when she was pressed by the interviewer Tiffany G confessed that she did not want any content on AO3 to be removed. Can’t understate how much appearances matter on CN internet spaces… it’s very common to insert fluff in your lines that nobody expects you to mean in a practical sense. “Improving our reputation and altering ToS to adhere to moral bottom lines” would never be a bad thing to say in public, especially when you were someone running for the board of a prominent organisation. I think that partially explains why she went back on her words when the interviewer dug in–she didn’t expect the attention on that, and in practice she doesn’t actually want AO3 to follow the track of mainland censorship.
Anyway, wakakaka I got off-track. Thanks for the reply!!
Totally agree
I don’t know if you realize but what you are saying is contradictory, if they have to pressure you to give an answer this is not given willingly. Their intentions are clear, they want to censor content in order to make this platform accessible in countries where they are openly aggressive with certain content, mainly lgbt (in China censorship in this area has increased recently because much of the content is against morality).
“Improving our reputation and altering ToS to adhere to moral bottom lines”
so if saying this line is just a nice way of wanting to censor according to some people’s criteria, Moral is not the same as ethics we should understand that, I remind you that some places today stoning someone is morally correct, if you notice even Chinese users don’t agree with what this person wants and stated.
The truth for me you are only looking at her nationality and wanting to be diverse ignoring the same voices of the community where she is from, I don’t know if your intention is to make yourself look like someone super inclusive but let me tell you that you are not, if this person was from another nationality would you be justifying her like you are now?
English is not my native language
Thank you for this, I very much agree with it
Yeah, no. You completely missed the mark of everything that whats going on. This is not about EN centrism, I’m neither from the UK nor the US, EN is not my mother language either. This is about someone trying to advocate for censorship based on some arbitrary reasons such as whats supposed to be pedophilic content. She wants her “home coutry” to have a better opinion of what AO3 is and by doing so such works must be “regulated”. We know what all of this will lead into because fandom history, not only english speaking but you could say western aswell, has developed antis, repression, backslash and so on and so forth made by people whose viewpoints are to use censorship for anything that falls under their morality radars. Now if Tiffany G were to run for twitter ambassador she would have been the latest rage and win by far, but AO3 its an archive, its on the name, it welcomes all sorts of works without censorship for the sake of archivism.
This is not an EN centric issue. As a non-EN, Asian user myself, the reason many of us gravitate towards fanfic and AO3 is because of the freedom of expression for topics that our cultures might restrict. You know what else many Asian users might find “needs addressing”? Queer/trans fiction, polyamory, any kind of underage sex, etc. The answer isn’t to bring in people with these “diverse” points of view because that isn’t what the very large and diverse non-EN speaking userbase (even if we do primarily write in EN) on AO3 want from the Archive. (You might also read comments from other CN users who have pointed out that wanting to find a middle ground with the restrictive Chinese censorship is not a good thing.)
As for CN users not using tags, I don’t see how changes to TOS regarding certain fictional content can change that and that was what Tiffany was proposing in the other chat, and that was what people took umbrage with. Perhaps there can be outreach drives for CN fans on how to enrich their AO3 experience but if the content creators want to use AO3 in a specific way that doesn’t violate the TOS (which most AO3 users find very satisfactory) then that’s their prerogative. While helping users find and filter content is a plus, AO3 is mainly an Archive to serve the fanwork creators. So if someone comes across an untagged work that might contain content they find offensive, they can simply not click on it.
I hope Tiffany hasn’t been subjected to any name calling or worse racism but the “vitriol” is mainly concern that the statements Tiffany has made DO seem to align closely with antis (EN or otherwise) that we’ve come into contact with, that go against everything AO3 stand for. Stuff like equating NSFW depictions of fictional minors to CP (which in itself can be offensive to survivors of CSA). Many of use have faced death threats and harrasment from people who use this line of thinking against us and very recently AO3 and it’s volunteers have also been subjected to malicious cyber attacks and doxxing by the same people. These are the same “outsiders” and “public” that Tiffany seems to want to make AO3 more palatable to.
Tiffany has also called some content that AO3 hosts illegal (not true, if TOS are followed) and gave some vague answers about needing tags for “pedophilic content” (already exist), which is why people are wondering if Tiffany is unfamiliar with AO3. Their attitude towards the Archive mirrors the attitudes that have been the downfall of other fansites and hence why people are urging them to brush up on fannish history. Their vague answers, after being pressed on the matter, without clarifying what exactly they intend to change about AO3’s TOS, their relative newness, and misrepresentation of what got AO3 banned on mainland China (if China is what they’re referring to when they say home country), etc also made people concerned about Tiffany being a potential anti in disguise trying to make AO3 less free.
(Either they know that it was an RPS fics that conservative fans of the celeb found offensive that got AO3 mass reported on false accusations and banned, and they’re lying about it when they say it was because of CP, which is anti behavior. Or they genuinely don’t know that and believe it was CP that got AO3 banned in China, which might indicate they at least run in anti echo chambers, and certainly that they need to be better informed. Both are concerning for a potential Board memeber.)
The biggest concern, which has people wondering how Tiffany got so far as to be a candidate for the Board has nothing to do with them being CN, and everything to do with their statements that don’t seem to align with AO3’s mission statement. It makes us wonder about the system for choosing volunteers/members and how vulnerable it might be to infiltration by antis, and makes us concerned for the continuation of AO3 in its present form (not an unfounded fear imo, we all know what antis are capable of). Bringing in differing perspectives is good, but not at the cost of fundamentally altering the soul of the project.
(Personally I would’ve found them to be a strong candidate if it weren’t for their statements in that final chat, but they are huge red flags for me and many other users.)
I agree with most of what you’re saying!! I would’ve found them a super strong candidate if not for the Aug 1 chat transcript. I definitely take umbrage with everything she said regarding changing ToS or altering the OTW’s fundamental values–however, I want to push for more nuance in the conversation regarding other issues she raised that to me are very valid, even if her solutions are completely the wrong ones. I think a hefty chunk of what Tiffany G expressed would have actionable solutions in local fandom outreach projects or the like, not in changes to ToS.
I have seen a lot of people either condemning Tiffany G and saying she does not represent Chinese fans, or people (in the west) saying that she might represent Chinese fans but AO3 should not be altered to cater to them. I hesitate to say which is worse, but there’s (naturally) a lot of the former in both CN and EN spaces. I’m not sure how to break out of this mould, because obviously her viewpoints on censorship are–to give a generous reading–ignorant and rejected by nearly all sides of fandom regardless of language, but actually the rest of what she says is very hot and sexy to me. Obviously I’m just one person, to whom Tiffany G’s views on censorship don’t invalidate the rest of her platform to me, even if it’s a dealbreaker on voting
I think it’s super worth having this kind of discussion and there have been some pretty bad years with the OTW board, all issues which were eventually resolved cos of the work of the rest of the organisation. There was a year when the existing board was basically pressured into resigning (for good reason), right? Which is why I feel more ambivalent about the antagonism towards Tiffany G–this is still a fandom space and she isn’t attempting a hostile takeover with backing. I think her voice and the discussion she raises is valuable.
I do think that having open elections and letting anyone (who meets the requirements) submit their candidacy makes candidates like Tiffany G inevitable. Tiffany G has been a volunteer with the OTW for at least six months (or nine months?) and clearly feels strongly enough about fandom that they decided to run for election, regardless of their ignorance on lots of matters. So I suppose it’s less about bringing in differing perspectives, it’s rather acknowledging that these perspectives already exist and should be talked about. If Tiffany G’s opinion on censorship represents any larger subset of volunteers in the OTW, that’s definitely something that should be looked into too
Thank you for the conversation!!
But from what I’ve seen, CN isn’t backing her either. Isn’t Weibo blowing up over this and saying they don’t want her either? I don’t disagree that keeping the global audience in mind when making any decision is a good idea, but I think it’s important to remember that the things Tiffany is saying are the things that CN fans never supported banning either, and are still pissed about. Either Tiffany is hoping that she can “clean up” Ao3’s reputation enough that CN un-bans it, or she’s frustratingly naive about something I would sincerely hope a board member is ABSOLUTELY clear on. The dog-piling has been a lot, but considering what OTW deals with and the past fandom elders (myself included) STRONGLY remember, it’s certainly not unwarranted or unworthy of alarm. We’ve lost bigger things faster. OTW has been consistent about that never happening again, and I want to believe them. I don’t extend that trust to Tiffany.
I think everything you’re saying is right. And, yes! I’ve just mentioned it in another comment above, but her views on censorship are horrendous and rejected by most people across the board.
My POV is quite subjective but I’m personally wary over the lack of nuance on Weibo. There are many top comments that malign Tiffany G’s presumed personality and presumed history–but I don’t have the right to judge Chinese fans for their emotional reaction. For context, the bans in China were quite traumatic for fandom there and because the authorities (the government who actually conducted the campaign and platform censorship) were immovable, the blame was majorly directed onto the group of fans (stereotyped as fans of a certain idol/actor) who “instigated” the bans. Tiffany G has become the strawman for that, but I don’t think it’s that black and white.
There /are/ a subset of people like Tiffany G who were innocent and did nothing to “instigate” the crackdown, but whose takeaway was still “I’ll adhere to the censorship and make my projects more respectable”. It’s not a personal issue that can be blamed on her entirely, it’s an issue with the fandom environment she’s native to and how suppressed parts of it are. But ahh, I do apologise for implying that she has the support of any strong demographic; I was foolish in talking for a group that I’m not part of either (I only know that these people–the ones whose takeaway was “time to adhere to censorship”–exist, but I don’t tend to interact with them either).
Unfortunately the internet environment in China necessitates a lot of this black/white separation. For me I see the dogpiling on Tiffany G on weibo to be as objective as the dogpiling in EN spaces–just in a different way.
(And I think at the moment, it is more common on weibo to joke about Tiffany G extending the wall to the rest of the world, rather than Tiffany G trying to rehabilitate AO3 to be re-platformed in China. The latter is indeed extremely far-fetched)
I’m grateful for the conversation!
“There really is a need to develop more culture, knowledge and accessibility around AO3 and its usage for CN users, because the way CN users use AO3 is fundamentally different from the culture/standard that EN fandom has developed over the past decade.”
That… is not a good reason for the site to change its values or format or accessibility. At all. AO3 was founded by English speakers based on western fandom principles — ie freedom of expression. CN users are guests here. Welcomed guests, but guests regardless. It is their own responsibility to learn to adapt. If there is a lack of effort on the part of CN users to tag their works properly, then that awareness, knowledge, and accessibility needs to be spread in CN fandom spaces by CN fandom members. AO3 already provided all the tools. The tagging system is excellent as-is. It is not obligated in any way whatsoever to change anything.
简中妹丢人走出国际，绝了
You cannot have partial censorship. This is core to AO3’s stance on censorship. Because in order to have partial censorship you must have a body deciding WHAT deserves to be censored. Tiffany is receiving feedback on a stance she is putting forward as a candidate. Elections are a place for the people to give feedbackon candidates stances.
In showing that she favors at least in part censorship and a change to the ToS which were carefully crafted and vetted by a team of lawyers she is showing that her running platform goes against the grain of what OTW stands for.
I have read CN users begging people to remember that Tiffany’s stance does not represent and CN fandom users, and that they mourn the loss of access to AO3 without the use of go arounds precisely BECAUSE AO3 was anti-censorship when they live in a censored state.
I don’t think the majority of people here are saying that they have issue with the growing CN user base or that that basement use AO3 in different ways or that they do not want diversity. I think that we are concerned that giving in to partial censorship inevitably leads to more censorship- as with strikethroughs, LiveJournal, tumblr, and now Twitter etc. This is the history people are asking Tiffany to familiarize herself with, in the same way you are asking us all to familiarize ourselves with weibo etc and they way CN users utilize AO3. If it is fair for you to ask that of EN speakers then why is it not fair of us to ask that of Tiffany?
I am all for exchange of ideas. But that requires exchange. And censorship (a decent part of her platform from her talks) discourages exchange rather than encourages it.
On another note “discourse” like this is pretty par for the course in the running of something like Ao3/OTW which deals with topics that might be offensive to different people in different places. If Tiffany cannot accept that this is a part of the job, pick what she can to learn from it, and discard the vitriol, trolling, or outright discrimination, then I don’t feel she would likely fair well in the setting of a board that faces the challenges OTW board members do.
To Tiffany if you read this. I for one and many others do not think you are a bad person. I think that you jumped in two feet first and ambitious believing your policy platform will bring the change you wish to see. I question whether that change is actually in the best interest of the organization though, based on it’s guiding principles. I also feel that someone applying for one of the top jobs at a not for profit should come with CONSIDERABLE related experience.
I’m even confused as to why the history with weibo and other Chinese platforms should be relevant to OTW board’s election. Especially because any Chinese fans jumping through hoops to post to AO3 clearly want AO3 for a reason. And any who jumped ship because of the ban would hardly care for changes in AO3’s TOS. If there’s a fundamental clash in ideology (regarding “respectability” and censorship) that prevents some Chinese fans (or other non-EN fans) from finding AO3 accessible then it’s something that can’t be bridged without compromising the integrity of the Archive.
I urge everyone reading up on this year’s candidates to reference Tiffany’s interview. You can get the short version here, as long with a link to the Reddit thread with more details.
https://jorzuela.tumblr.com/post/692385786267566080/if-you-donated-to-ao3-you-should-vote-you-can
She is not a suitable candidate since her views are antithetical to the mission of OTW/Ao3.
I don’t think she should be on the board.
We came from hostile web sites that censored our works, to have freedom here. That’s what AO3 means to us: freedom of imagination.
It has variety of ships, pairings, ratings and a very functional filter that can exclude works and tags that are not of our cups of tea.
While I understand where she’s coming from and that AO3 is banned in her country there are already hundreds of platforms, including one that uses Ao3’s public code for people to read from that ban dark and problematic content. AO3 has always stood for freedom in writing, against censorship and is one of the few free writing safe havens.
AO3 was born because fanfiction.net started pruning things, it can’t be risked.
I would like to thank commenters for the more down-to-earth approach to Tiffany’s candidature. Although I disagree with some of her stances, I am glad that she can be a candidate. It’s good to hear what everyone has to say and bring to the board, and it’s true that we around here are still very much EN-centered. Tiffany won’t be the one I’ll place at the top of my ballot, but I find it is still good to have other voices, from fandoms whose dynamics we are not always familiar with. I’m rather shocked at people downright attacking this candidate. The OTW released their vision statement recently and they’ll probably need a variety of voices. While not agreeing with everything, let’s not totally shut down (and even less insult!) people who share a common passion with a different point of view. And a board of directors is a board; we can only hope that they’d discuss everything together so everyone has something to bring. It does not have to be drastic measures.
I am very glad the community has rallied against this person. As someone who saw the demise of livejournal, tumblr, ff.net and others, every alarm bell was ringing when I read her part of the transcript.
AO3 has one of the most robust tagging and blacklisting systems available on a creative site. If you don’t want to see a particular theme, you are well in your power to hide it. And let’s be real here. Every time someone like this says “child porn” it’s a smokescreen and what they really mean is LGBTQ content, but they know they’d be slaughtered for that. So they mumble some vague things about pedophilia and move on, hoping no one takes a closer look. Tumblr did exactly the same. Apple pulled their app because there was too much (adult) porn and so much of it was LGBTQ and it was making the advertisers huffy. Then they lied and said it was because of child porn. Livejournal was the another example. They claimed it was illegal stuff, but anyone there at the time can tell you it was because there was too much same sex shipping. It’s about advertisers and the money they bring. I guarantee that if AO3 was mainly straight pairings, no one would care about trying to make it “acceptable.” You don’t fool anyone, Tiffany.
If a gallery is hosting a disturbing collection, but they put a warning at the door, and someone goes in and gets upset, whose fault is that? If a kid sneaks into an NC-17 rated movie, do you blame the cinema or the kid? If someone goes on AO3, fails to use the very obvious, very easy tagging system and sees a story that upsets them, that is on that person. Not the creator, not AO3, not anyone but them. Not that AO3 can’t be improved (we really need a permanent blacklist) but this is not the way to do it.
Fanfiction will never die. Even if AO3 elected a board of Tiffanys and the site crashed and burned, tumblrjournal.net style, a new one would pop up sooner or later. But we always lose so much when that happens. I hope we can nip this in the bud and learn from our past mistakes. Never give the Tiffanys an inch, or they’ll try and take a mile.
I feel really uncomfortable with even the suggestion of someone who equated real life child porn and child victims of SA to fictional content in any capacity. It is disrespectful to victims such as myself as well as downplays the realities of what we have gone through. I do not trust that they have an solid sense of morality simply because they cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality. Why? Because they are clearly using our victimhood to argue a point that isn’t about protecting past, present, and future victims so much as using us without our consent to enact an agenda. As someone who was used against my will and without my consent, it cannot be overstated how inappropriate and disgusting it is to use us without our consent again.
As a queer person who has been in fandom for a long time, I suspect Tiffany G would simply use this as a way to remove lgbtq+ content and creators and otherwise make AO3 into a homophobic and transphobic space for fan creators in an effort to make it more ‘respectable’ for the Chinese government. In an effort to being more open to these intolerant ideals about lgbtq+ content on AO3, this will not only breed an intolerant environment, but also make the globally accessed and created website adhere to Chinese standards of content and therefore significantly less globally focused than it is now. Meanwhile, China will probably never lift the ban on AO3 no matter how much of this content is purged. Further, it is genuinely worth questioning whether Tiffany G actually believes that this ban would be lifted or not as intent and spirit behind this messaging drastically changes if she feels it is unlikely.
There is a link to this page about the candidate chat: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/chat-transcript-august-1/
Of course, there has already many comments below. So before voting it would be wise to look at this page and consider it carefully. Due to the Great Fire Wall and publish restrictions on mainland, many CN users have to find other platforms for fanfic. DON’T LET INTERNET CENSORSHIP LIMIT AO3!!!
有爭議的內容請參考以下鏈接：https://elections.transformativeworks.org/chat-transcript-august-1/
務必在投票之前三思。我們不希望創作環境像牆內的網路審查一樣糟糕。請讓審查制度遠離AO3!!!
‘ At present, she is working as a technical support person in a governmental organization.’
I do rather think that an employee of an organization of an authoritarian, trying hard for totalitarian, government should not be sitting on the board of the organization that is the daughter of samizdat. If for no other reason that I am deeply, deeply concerned for her safety.
While I agree with the candidate’s position that the board needs to be more inclusive of its NE Asian (as well as SE and South Asian) fans, I do not think she is the candidate to do it. I also strongly suspect candidates from those regions who are either ex pats or part of the diaspora communities would be better fits for the organization.
You’re not as shrewd a reader as you’d like to think.
If you read her other interviews, she mentions she migrated to a different country when young and fanfiction was a refuge:
>”When I was in high school, I had a difficult time for a while moving from one country to another.”
Link: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/tiffany-g-2022-qa-communication/
She is an expat. Probably from Mainland China because she mentions an “incident” in her “home country” (look up 227 incident). Fans of a Chinese actor got offended by an RPF fanfic that portrays their idol as a trans woman in their 20s and felt this ruined their idol’s image and career. They mass-reported AO3 to Chinese authorities and got it banned for good in China due to their obscenity laws. The candidate above says this work was pedophilia but the age of consent in China is 14 and the younger party in this fic, another idol, was 16, if we want to be hyper-specific to her home country and not the US. So she’s quite disingenuous in glossing over this detail.
What concerns me is her repeatedly calling works on AO3 as “CP” and how she kept insisiting that CSEM exists on the platform without defining what this material is, in her Aug 1 interview.
I highly doubt this candidate will protect the interests of this organisation or the writers and readers of this website if called to legal defence.
Censorship is a slippery slope. Today it’s removing all works in the underage tag, tomorrow it’s all LGBT content for being legally, morally and religiously obscene.
The site was founded by someone who shipped Wincest and Thorki shipper, both egregious incest ships with age gaps, however minimal. If we use today’s fancop and anti definitions of ships and how fanfics are classified, that fictional material would be illegal CP.