Posted by callmeri

https://www.transformativeworks.org/spotlight-on-recent-legislation-november-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=272944

We’ve heard from users concerned about many recent laws and their potential to impact AO3. We want to reassure you that while this continues to be a challenging time with a number of troubling laws under consideration around the world, AO3 is not currently affected. AO3 is run by a noncommercial, nonprofit organization, and it does not implement infinite scroll, offer recommendations to users, or use other techniques with which many regulators are concerned.

While these bills should not directly impact AO3, they are a reminder to stay alert for potential legal issues affecting fans in your area. Where applicable, the OTW encourages people to contact their local representatives and voice their concerns. You can read more about the OTW’s Legal Advocacy work on our website.

Chinese Obscenity Laws and Danmei Authors

We have received a number of inquiries from concerned users regarding the arrests of dozens of danmei writers in China. As an organization, the OTW wholeheartedly shares these concerns. We stand firmly in support of free expression and we are closely monitoring the situation.

Age Verification Laws

Age verification laws have been proposed in multiple states and countries around the world. These laws create barriers that prevent open access to information, hamper the right to freedom of speech, and threaten users’ privacy. The OTW continues to strongly oppose these laws and we want to assure you that we do not intend to introduce age verification on our projects. We continue to monitor for opportunities to make our voice heard and encourage fans to do so as well. Local voices are often the most important for policymakers to hear from.

We’ve filed two amicus briefs on age verification laws already this year. One, filed with Wikimedia (who runs Wikipedia) and other organizations, in Netchoice v. Brown, urged the appellate court to uphold a block on the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act which requires online platforms to verify users’ ages before allowing access, restrict certain content for minors through strict controls, and actively monitor and edit content in order to remain compliant with these restrictions.

In a second amicus brief filed with Wikimedia in Netchoice v. Fitch, we expressed concerns with Mississippi House Bill 1126, which threatens platforms’ ability to distribute free knowledge by imposing broad, sweeping restrictions that encroach on free speech rights.

Copyright

We also filed another amicus brief with other organizations in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, where we discussed the importance of internet access as a practical necessity of daily life, and argued that holding service providers liable for users’ copyright infringement based only on accusations of infringement, rather than actual proof of infringement, would threaten innovation and creativity by creating an incentive for service providers to deny service to creators without requiring evidence or providing due process.

UK’s Online Safety Act

We are monitoring how the Online Safety Act is being interpreted and enforced by the authorities.

Russia’s LGBT Ban

Russia’s restrictions on LGBT-themed content have escalated from a 2013 law aimed at protecting minors to a sweeping ban on all positive depictions of LGBT relationships. In 2023, the Russian Supreme Court labeled the “international LGBT movement” as extremist, effectively criminalizing LGBT advocacy. We strongly condemn this and continue to monitor the situation.

Game Storefronts Delisting NSFW Content

Recently, gaming storefronts Itch.io, Steam, and Valve have begun removing or restricting adult content, citing pressure from payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. These moves are obviously concerning for freedom of expression. The OTW remains committed to both fans’ privacy and freedom of imagination. We will not change our policies on explicit or queer media.

KOSA

We continue to monitor the progression of KOSA, which has been reintroduced in the United States Congress. Although AO3 is not a covered platform under this bill, the legislation, if passed, is likely to have serious freedom of speech and privacy implications for all internet users. OTW Legal has already communicated its opposition to this bill to Congress and continues to encourage U.S. users to voice their opposition to it.

Australian Online Safety Act

While we do not believe that this law as-is applies to AO3 or any of our other projects, this is a developing situation that we will continue to monitor. Read more about this in our earlier post: Social Media Bans and AO3.

With regard to all the above legislation as well as any in the future, AO3 and the OTW will do whatever we can to preserve access to AO3 and inform users if anything changes. We remain committed to freedom of expression and will defend it as necessary to ensure that AO3 remains a safe, open space for creative expression.

Is there a new law that might affect fans or fannish activities in your country or region? Send us a message about legislation you think we should know about. (Submitting a concern doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a future Spotlight on Legal Issues post.)

https://www.transformativeworks.org/spotlight-on-recent-legislation-november-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=272944

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-433-0-9-439-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=272902

In October, we continued our internationalization efforts to make AO3’s interface and emails translatable. We also worked on usability improvements to a variety of site features, including clarified buttons for posting and editing works, improved password reset messages and forms, and more consistent redirects when logging in or out. Alongside these updates, we overhauled exchange participants’ Assignments pages and smoothed out other smaller issues across the site.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Cole Kelling, Cubostar, John Pork, and Tani!

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, CJ Record, Cole Kelling, Connie Feng, Cubostar, dismayonnaise, Emily Wiegand, Ivedonestranger, Jake Faulkner, james_, John Pork, katieyang, marcus8448, nil-cipher (Wanda), Samridhi, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Tani, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
• Code reviewers: anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, Hamham6, james_, lydia-theda, redsummernight, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, weeklies
• Testers: Allonautilus, Anh P, AuroraT, Bilka, Brian Austin, choux, Deniz, hvalrann, Keladry, killiane, Lute, lydia-theda, Meep Linger, megidola, ömer faruk, ­Pent, pk2317, Sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.433

On October 1, we deployed improvements around password changes and resets. We also made some other small security fixes all around the site.

• [AO3-2520] – We made it possible to delete comments with JavaScript disabled.
• [AO3-5640] – When a Policy & Abuse admin tries to leave notes on an account without selecting an action to connect those notes to (e.g., banning the user or just making notes), they will now get a sensible error message.
• [AO3-7023] – We fixed the invisible error you’d get if you tried to create a bookmark for an invalid external URL.
• [AO3-7125] – The site we linked on our “Session Expired” error page to explain how to clear your browser cache removed their tutorial, so we are now linking to a different site.
• [AO3-7127] – We bumped rexml from 3.4.1 to 3.4.2.
• [AO3-7136] – Since the 8tracks website no longer exists, we removed it from the list of allowed sources for embedded media and the Terms of Service FAQ.
• [AO3-7137] – We bumped the rack gem from 2.2.17 to 2.2.18 to deal with a security issue.
• [AO3-6139] – The series we created in our automated tests didn’t always contain a work, which was confusing. We’ve updated them to always contain at least one work.
• [AO3-6968] – AO3’s tag wranglers often need to access or post comments on tags, so we added links in the wrangling bins to make that easier to do.
• [AO3-7038] – We restricted the ability to grant all current users invitations to admins with certain roles.
• [AO3-7086] – We updated the wording and layout of the change password page (as well as some related error messages) to improve clarity and ease of use.
• [AO3-7112] – To assist users resetting their password, we updated the instructions in the password reset email.
• [AO3-7114] – We improved the error message you received when you tried to reset your password using an invalid or incorrect link so that it actually explains what went wrong.
• [AO3-7126] – We improved the wording of the most recent login information in the user history accessible to admins.

0.9.435

On October 3, we upgraded to Ruby 3.4 and it all went smoothly! Except that our release script skipped a version number again, but that’s a very minor problem for a major upgrade.

• [AO3-7145] – We upgraded Ruby from version 3.2 to 3.4 in multiple slow steps.
• [AO3-7148] – To reduce deprecation errors with the Ruby 3.4 upgrade, we replaced the unmaintained unicode_utils gem with Ruby’s built-in Unicode case folding.

0.9.436

On October 9, we overhauled the page where a user’s challenge assignments are listed to make it easier to find incomplete assignments. We also fixed some style issues and did a lot of work for our ongoing project to internationalize the entire site!

• [AO3-7029] – The Low Vision Default skin was missing the links to skip to and from the filters; the links are now present.
• [AO3-7077] – We fixed some old, broken links tag wranglers saw when looking at the tag wrangling tools page.
• [AO3-5349] – When someone fills your prompt from a prompt meme, you get an email. We’ve prepared this email for translation.
• [AO3-6415] – To help gift exchange participants find assignments they need to fulfill, we’ve split Assignments pages into two pages: Unposted Assignments and Completed Assignments. Additionally, completed assignments are no longer counted in the sidebar, and all assignments are now listed in order of assignment date to ensure that your most pressing assignments are displayed first.
• [AO3-7005] – Some buttons in iOS Safari had bold text, so we unbolded them to match all the other buttons.
• [AO3-7020] – We’ve set up our work byline cache to be translatable without any risk of showing a cached translation to someone who isn’t using that locale. This is an important first step in preparing more cached content for interface translation.
• [AO3-7043] – We migrated the filter taggings table, which helps keep track of which canonical tags apply to a work, so it can hold more rows and won’t run out of room in the future.
• [AO3-7055] – We made the emails you get when someone leaves you a comment or edits it translatable.
• [AO3-7075] – We added some extra padding around the “Last visited” text on works in your history.
• [AO3-7103] – We updated the email you receive when Open Doors uploads a work of yours as part of importing an archive to AO3.
• [AO3-7105] – Similarly, we updated the email you get if you don’t already have an AO3 account when Open Doors imports one of your works.

0.9.437

On October 13, we changed the buttons for posting, previewing, and editing a work to have clearer names and behave more consistently. We also fixed a number of small bugs.

• [AO3-4181] – We made it so that pressing “Cancel” while editing a work redirects you to the specific work you were editing, instead of the page with all your works.
• [AO3-6217] – We fixed the 500 error that occurred when an admin pressed “Cancel” on the page to edit a work’s tags or language.
• [AO3-7018] – You will no longer receive a 500 error if you enter an invalid URL in a collection’s custom header URL field. Instead you will get an error message telling you what the problem is.
• [AO3-7108] – We fixed a problem where the default skin could have the wrong attributes in development installs.
• [AO3-7124] – For chapters with custom titles, the chapter title in the work download wouldn’t include the chapter number. We’ve added it now, so the chapter title always matches what you see on the website.
• [AO3-7154] – We fixed a bug that was preventing Policy & Abuse admins from adding a custom note when banning a spambot.
• [AO3-5996] – We’re renaming a database column on comments to more accurately reflect its purpose. As part of that, we’ve now started recording data in the column with the new name.
• [AO3-7153] – We updated the rack gem from version 2.2.18 to 2.2.20 to address a security issue.
• [AO3-6644] – Collection header images used to allow .jpg files but not .jpeg files. Now we accept both formats, since they’re the same type of image.
• [AO3-7085] – We added a “Save Draft” button to the form for posting a new work and updated all of the buttons at the bottom of the forms for posting, previewing, or editing a work to be more clear and consistent.
• [AO3-7096] – To make it easier to debug issues with collections’ unrevealed and anonymous settings, we’re now tracking when they were last updated. (Please note that this information is only intended for admins with database access and is not included on the site interface.)
• [AO3-7106] – We moved the code for editing your profile from the users controller to the more fitting profile controller.

0.9.438

On October 17, we deployed a large refactoring of how we handle redirects back to pages that you came from, which made redirects after logging in and out much more reliable and also fixed some redirect-related 500 errors when accessing AO3 through alternative URLs.

• [AO3-3011] – You will no longer get an error 404 if you hide a site banner and then log out.
• [AO3-3719] – If you open a restricted work while logged out and then log in from the page you are redirected to, you will now be redirected back to the work instead of to your user dashboard.
• [AO3-5842] – If you change your skin using the footer, you will stay on the page you were viewing with the correct skin applied, instead of being redirected to the page about the skin.
• [AO3-5913] – When you log in for the first time, you will now only get a message saying you’ve successfully logged in instead of a confusing message that says, “Your account has already been activated.”
• [AO3-6402] – When you delete an account and log in to a different one, you will no longer be directed to the “Account deleted!” page, which would make you wrongly think you deleted the account you just logged into.
• [AO3-5949] – Across a variety of corners of AO3, we’ve changed where you get redirected to when you log in, log out, or cancel actions, so that it’s generally more logical to what you’re trying to do.

0.9.439

On October 20, we made several internationalization-related email updates and released a variety of smaller fixes.

• [AO3-4309] – We prepared the subscription email for translation, which involved some complicated localization and caching problems all at once!
• [AO3-5804] – Together with preparing the subscription email for translation, we also changed it to only show a chapter’s byline if it is different from the already listed work byline.
• [AO3-5805] – And while we were at it, we also made sure the chapter byline in the subscription email really is the chapter byline, and not the work byline.
• [AO3-7128] – We prevented collection maintainers with differing roles on a parent and subcollection from being listed twice in subcollection blurbs and profiles.
• [AO3-7163] – We fixed a bug that prevented the live validation error messages for the fields on the edit profile page from showing up.
• [AO3-7173] – We fixed an error 500 when you updated your filtered inbox (such as marking a comment as read) while accessing AO3 via an alternative URL.
• [AO3-7162] – We upgraded the version of github/codeql-action from 3 to 4.
• [AO3-7172] – We upgraded the redis gem from version 3.3 to 4.8.
• [AO3-6733] – If a work or user has been reported to Policy & Abuse, AO3 won’t let you report them again for a period to prevent duplicate reports. We’ve made this period configurable so that it can be adjusted as needed.
• [AO3-7063] – We prevented Safari on iOS from assuming that random numbers were phone numbers and turning them into links to call those numbers.
• [AO3-7069] – To assist with testing, we made it possible to display specific works in our email previews.
• [AO3-7113] – We updated the form for changing your password as part of a password reset to more closely match the form you see if you’re changing your password while logged in.
• [AO3-7155] – We added a missing space between the text and the arrow on the “Previous Chapter” link at the bottom of multichapter works.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-433-0-9-439-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=272902