2023 OTW Management Controversy

Event
Event:	2023 OTW Management Controversy
Participants:
Date(s):	May 2023 – Present
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Fandom:	Multi
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The 2023 OTW Management Controversy is a series of controversies related to the OTW that became prominent beginning in mid-2023, focused on mistreatment of volunteers and poor management. While some of the topics of discussion involved in the controversy had been underway for some time, things began in earnest during the End OTW Racism campaign in May 2023. This resulted discussion of OTW policies and volunteer treatment internally and externally, as well as the resignation of three Board members in July, making the 2023 OTW Board Election uncontested.

During discussions of the End OTW Racism campaign on fail_fandomanon in late May 2023, a former Policy & Abuse Committee (PAC) volunteer said that following May 2022 CSEM Attacks against the OTW, they had been suspended for two months with no explanation by the Legal Committee over the objections of the PAC chairs. Reportedly, this new information caused OTW volunteers to ask internally for an explanation. On May 30, OTW Board posted a response internally that was then immediately leaked on fail_fandomanon. This response itself generated a lot of concern and outrage in the social circles of fans who read ffa, where some fans called for the Board and/or the Legal Committee to resign and others discussed building their own fanfic archives. Fans discussed OTW volunteer support, the responsiveness of the OTW Board, and the legal status of AO3, prompting OTW to make a newspost affirming OTW's compliance with the law on 16 June 2023. The OTW Board public meeting on 2 July 2023 was widely attended and poorly organized, resulting in much confusion. In late July, OTW volunteer dhobikikutti shared that they had been disciplined by a committee chair, and shared controversial comments by Board member Alex Tischer, after which Alex resigned from the Board.

Timeline

May

• May 6, 2023: An OTW Signal post includes a quote from a February interview with OTW lawyer Betsy Rosenblatt speaking approvingly of AI-generated fanfic. The post on the OTW website gets over 300 comments from irate fans.
• May 10, 2023: End OTW Racism campaign for May 17-31 is announced on Twitter and Tumblr.
• May 17, 2023:
  • End OTW Racism campaign begins. Discussion is initially overshadowed in some places by ongoing discussions related to AO3 & AI Generated Content.
  • On fail-fandomanon, an anonymous former PAC volunteer, soon to be revealed as Azarias, describes issues PAC faced and criticizes the OTW's handling of reported potential CSEM.
• May 20: Be more democratic, be more autocratic, OTW is posted by Dreamwidth user chestnut_pod in response to End OTW Racism. chestnut_pod moderates a large discussion in the comment section.
• May 23: A discussion about chestnut_pod's post and comments starts on fail_fandomanon.
• May 22-23: Cross-pollination between the fail_fandomanon thread and chestnut_pod's post continues.
  • Tei, another former PAC volunteer, comments on chestnut_pod's post with information about the committee's processes, prompting replies from synecdochic.
  • Synecdochic, a long-time Trust & Safety professional, expresses her horror at the details divulged in the fail_fandomanon discussion. She describes her own unpleasant interactions with the OTW following the 2022 CSAM Attacks when someone (later revealed to be Rebecca Tushnet) asked her to take down her Twitter thread of resources for OTW volunteers victimized by the attacks.
  • Azarias, the former PAC anon from fail_fandomanon, de-anons. synecdochic, who used to work with Azarias on LiveJournal's abuse team, expresses support for Azarias.
• May 23-24: Azarias continues posting to fail_fandomanon, giving details about the 2022 CSAM attacks. She describes a sequence of events in which she was suspected as the culprit, suspended by the Legal Committee over the objections of the PAC chairs, not given an explanation for two months, and then reinstated, after which point she burnt out and quit PAC voluntarily.
• May 27: OTW's Communications committee posts on its LiveJournal account, asking for input on whether to stop posting to LiveJournal. No one comments, and the account is closed on June 10.
• May 28-30:
  • During ongoing discussions about all the other revelations and issues with OTW, anons at fail_fandomanon mention a story from August 2020 about the Mainland Chinese volunteers who work on the OTW's weibo account being told with no notice to post an announcement that might put them at legal risk during a politically sensitive time. The announcement was to share information about the newly-available language tags for Taiwanese and other Chinese languages.
  • Another anon shares that the OTW's Board is now planning to shut down the Weibo account, again with no notice or discussion.
• May 29: A new Dreamwidth account, synonymous, is created to track all of the discussions happening.
• May 30:
  • An internal communication from the OTW Board to its volunteers regarding the treatment of Azarias is leaked to fail_fandomanon. The communication is widely interpreted as implying that Azarias was the culprit behind the 2022 CSAM attacks.
  • Anons discuss on fail_fandomanon.
  • Synecdochic makes a statement on Twitter and Dreamwidth about the leak, describing it as retaliation against Azarias for speaking out and public defamation. She advises OTW volunteers to quit.
  • Azarias goes silent for several days.

June

• June 2: Impertinence creates a carrd to summarize and explain Azarias' revelations and the ongoing criticism of the OTW's management of its volunteers. The carrd is widely disseminated.
• June 3: Having consulted a lawyer about the OTW's accusations against her, Azarias returns to the discussion and posts on fail_fandomanon. Among other things, she shares her belief that Heidi Tandy was the author of the communication that was leaked on May 30.
• June 10: The Communications committee closes its LiveJournal account and posts on its Dreamwidth account, asking for input on whether to stop posting OTW news updates to Dreamwidth. The Dreamwidth post receives 59 comments, overwhelmingly opposed to closing the account. Two anonymous commenters point out the implications of the post's timing during a period in which the OTW is under heavy criticism from synecdochic, one of Dreamwidth's founders.
• June 12: The OTW posts a public acknowledgement of the End OTW Racism campaign, but not of the allegations of volunteer abuse against Azarias. The post receives 600+ comments on AO3 News and 28 on the OTW website.
• June 13: dhobikikutti, a tag wrangler who lives in India, posts Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works. This open letter to the Board accuses past and present leadership of "fostering a culture of structural racism and discrimination that negatively impacts the well-being of its volunteers, and has driven many more away."
• June 14: Impertinence emails the OTW Board, calling on members to address and act on the allegations made against the OTW. She shares the contents of this email publicly.
• June 15: synecdochic posts a Twitter thread about "the OTW's absolute failure at Trust and Safety" and subsequently compiles the thread into a Dreamwidth post. Among other things, she suggests that the OTW is not in legal compliance regarding its handling of potential CSEM reports on AO3.
• June 16: The OTW posts a rebuttal to synecdochic's post on its website, but not on AO3 News. The post receives 169 comments.
• June 18: An anonymous Tumblr account, 221loislane, posts a timeline of relevant events to date.
• June 18/19: The OTW announces the list of candidates running in the next Board election. The announcement receives 91 comments on AO3 News.
• June 19-30: Fans discuss the merits of paying membership dues in order to vote in the upcoming election, and at least one group of fans pools money to purchase memberships for any fans who cannot afford to do so themselves.
• June 25: The Communications committee posts announces on its Dreamwidth account that it will close the account and use a feed instead. The post receives 78 comments from displeased Dreamwidth users, including dhobikikutti, who draws a parallel to the OTW's decision to shut down its Weibo account.
• June 30: Deadline to become an OTW member to vote in the 2023 OTW Board Election.

July

• July 2:
  • The OTW Board hosts its quarterly public meeting on Discord. 200+ people show up; the meeting is a mess, and one Board member says, "Despite warnings from our volunteers, we were unprepared for the growth of this meeting in comparison to past meetings, and we apologize for that."
  • On social media, many fans discuss (1) the lack of moderation and what it says about the Board's competence, (2) the possibility of organizational reform, and (3) whether people who had paid membership dues in order to vote in the upcoming Board elections had wasted their money.
• July 6: End OTW Racism posts a summary of the election candidates. This is quickly met with backlash, as others point out that the candidates with distinctly non-Anglophone names are regarded with a more critical eye while the candidates with Anglophone names are summarized with more support. Fans argue that End OTW Racism is perpetuating anti-Asian racism. (For more details, see End OTW Racism § Vote to End OTW Racism.)
• July 10-11: Russian hackers DDOS AO3. Fans argue that the AO3 not already having DDOS protection is another example of OTW's poor management.
• July 16: Synonymous publishes a chat transcript of the July 2 Board meeting.
• July 19: dhobikikutti receives a Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP) alleging that she violated OTW rules by outing a fellow volunteer and publicly sharing internal communications.
• July 24: dhobikikutti publicly shares the CCAP sent to her on July 19 and describes it as an example of racist retaliation. dhobikikutti's treatment is discussed on fail-fandomanon and Twitter as an example of OTW's racist double standard.
• July 26: dhobikikutti shares recent, racist comments from OTW Board member Alex Tischer and demands Alex's suspension from the Board.
• July 26: Someone leaks news to fail_fandomanon that an anonymous person submitted "malevolent questions" for the upcoming Board candidate Q&A. They state that the questions were directed at a mainland Chinese candidate and that the Elections committee decided to share the questions with the candidate in advance.
• July 27: The OTW announces that Natalia Gruber and Antonius Melisse have resigned from the Board. The news posts are later edited to add that Alex Tischer has also resigned from the Board. The AO3 News post receives 300+ comments.
• July 28: Emyn, a former Board candidate who dropped out of the election in June, makes a Tumblr post about why they withdrew their candidacy. The post cites the leaks of internal OTW communications to fail-fandomanon and express Emyn's support of the CCAP against dhobikikutti, describing her as "aggressive" and "incendiary". Simultaneously, Emyn describes Alex Tischer as "blunt and brusque" but expresses that they were unbothered by this, because Alex Tischer's demeanour was similar to those of people in the European countries Emyn had lived in.
• July 29:
  • dhobikikutti makes a post about racism within the OTW, sharing multiple examples of racism towards BIPOC volunteers and providing more details about the proposed Weibo account shutdown.
  • During the first live chat with Board candidates, Zixin answers the malevolent questions that were discussed on fail_fandomanon on July 26. The questions contain misinformation about Zixin. Fans discuss whether the Elections committee should have discarded the questions, rather than present them to Zixin to answer.
  • Dhobikikutti makes an addendum to her post, sharing (with permission) Zixin's answer to an additional question that was deemed so egregious it was redacted before reaching the official chat; the question falsely accuses the candidate of committing a crime. Zixin's answer contextualizes the stakes for the OTW's Chinese volunteers and is widely shared.
  • Azarias comments on fail_fandomanon that this is the "SECOND time I know of a volunteer trying or threatening to get mainland Chinese volunteers arrested and the Org responding with 'Meh.'" Azarias describes another incident in which a volunteer joked about using their access to user data to report mainlanders to the Chinese government; Chinese volunteers had reported the incident to OTW, but the reports were ignored until Azarias, who is white, made the same report.
• July 30: The tumblr account fandomantiracism posts an essay arguing that "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."

August

• August 15: 2023 OTW Board Election results are announced.
• August 25: dhobikikutti resigns from the OTW.

Fan Reactions

Punk and a few others posted some stuff

Fairestcat's post

https://wistfuljane.dreamwidth.org/2023/07/02/otw-july-2023-meeting.html

Meta/Further Reading

• AO3 Volunteer Abuse, ^{Archived version} A carrd by Impertinence composed of statements made on FFA about the treatment of PAC volunteers.
• An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations, ^{Archived version} A timeline of events by an anonymous tumblr user
• In which I try to write a short summary of What's Going Down At AO3, ^{Archived version} A summary by erinptah

See also

• OTW and AO3 Racism Discussion (2020)
• Just got a second official warning (post by le-bjorn)