Vibe-Coded AO3 Clone Dies After 2,000 Takedown Notices in a Single Day
404 Media · rss · 2026-11-03
404 Media reports: while AO3 is down for up to four weeks after a security incident (18.5M works temporarily inaccessible), a vibe-coded site called ao3.life scraped fanfiction with "AI agents controlling 40 virtual machines," reuploading works as EPUBs and paid AI audiobooks, claiming 91% revenue share for authors. It drew 126,592 unique users in 24 hours but faced fierce backlash — authors said even archive-locked works were scraped, and AO3's downtime made identity verification for takedowns nearly impossible. Creator Ganesh, a self-described 17-year-old from India, says he received 2,000+ takedown requests in one day and sold only 11 audiobooks; he apologized and shut the site down. The piece also covers fandom's broader AI-scraping woes and fans privately sharing Google Drive links of downloaded works.
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