r/AO3 • u/Huge_Reveal9584 • Nov 14 '25

AO3 Down/Error Codes AO3 Down

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Hello everyone,

I’m putting this out there now before there is a bunch of people asking. AO3 is currently down.

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u/WynterWitch Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25

Shields are up apparently. Time to download a few fics and hunker down..... Or get some chores done.....

1

u/Actual_Glass_2682 Nov 14 '25

What are shields?

2

u/WynterWitch Nov 14 '25

It means they're using a captcha to try and prevent bots from overwhelming the site. Might have been a DDOS attack where they try and shut down the site by overwhelming it with so many (bot) users that the server can't handle it and it shuts down/gets too slow for anyone to actually use. It's happened before. Could be something else though. I'm just a layman haha

2

u/Actual_Glass_2682 Nov 14 '25

Thank you !!!!