vorchagirl:

commander-hot-pants:

soldiermom1973:

catherea:

sniperct:

bettsfic:

the-arkadian:

Attention fanfic writers: If you use Google Docs to write/store/back-up your fics, you might want to download anything you don’t already have backed up elsewhere. Google is apparently invading and deleting people’s personal drive content thanks to the FOSTA/SESTA bill that recently passed through Congress. Essentially, it criminalizes ANY platform where sexual content could be placed.

It may also be worth making sure you have offline back-ups of any and all fics you have posted here on Tumblr and on AO3, in case Yahoo get antsy (they’ve been cracking down on the porn bot tumblrs already) and OTW face a legal challenge to take down AO3. I’m hoping that’s not the case – but I was on LiveJournal during Strikethrough in 2007 and I remember the way that whole communities as well as individual LJ accounts were deleted and purged; it was instrumental in the founding of AO3 in the first place. That was a widespread purge of fanfic writers and communities, LGBT+ communities and writers and more, all due to legal threats that SixApart, the company that owned and hosted LiveJournal, received due to allegedly hosting paedophile content. After Strikethrough was over and LJ admitted they’d gone OTT, there were a number of communities and accounts that didn’t get reinstated. I’ve always been quite careful not to have my Tumblr flagged up as NSFW in part because of that. Given the number of Facebook accounts that get temporary or permanent suspensions thanks to malicious false reports, I have very little confidence that Tumblr’s staff won’t make mistakes.

I’m not sure what this means for collaborative fics; but Google Docs probably aren’t a safe platform for that anymore.

since there are no links here i did some googling and found that yes, google is deleting sexually explicit content from gdocs, but no, google is not deleting sexually explicit written works. only pictures/video. the terms of service state:

“Do not publish sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos…. Additionally, we do not allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography.” Writing about porn and sex is permitted, the policy states, as long as it’s not accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos. According to Google, Drive uses a combination of automated systems and manual review to decide what’s in violation.

[x] emphasis mine

sure, it’s always a good idea to back up your fics anyway, but for the moment, work is safe on google drive. 

Reblogging this one because the other one going around is a little misleading. (but backups are a good thing)

@commander-hot-pants @soldiermom1973

@catherea thanks for tagging me in this one.

Good to know

I’d also like to point out that there are posts going around stating that google changed their TOS in order to do this, which is incorrect. Their TOS has contained this stipulation for quite some time. It’s not new, but they are allegedly enforcing it in regards in images. Not writing.