fanfiction.net down

[hmelton]

Is anyone getting into Fanfiction.net all I get is a DDOS delay that hangs on 5 seconds

Noticed Fanfiction.net was down yesterday afternoon in the middle of reading a fanfic I had put off reading since last Novermber and was about two thirds of the way through.

Very aggravating.

I have done all the work arounds I could think of, such as trying the mobile site, flushing my browsers buffers and even starting up one of rarely used emergency browsers and trying the site.

Finally I tried "Down for everyone or just me" and it said it was "Down for everyone."

JUst checked it a hour ago and it still says it "Down for everyone."

What's going on? Any one heard anything?

HDM

[SilverFang01]

It’s up for me.

[robkelk]

It's loading immediately for me.

[hmelton]

It’s up for me.

Still down for me and according to the website I used to check it's down for everyone.

One thing I did notice in today's attempts was that it would sometimes load the main page with all the category headers, but trying to actually load any fanfic's content ends up stuck in the 5 second DDOS infinity loop.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm having no problems. Maybe it's something regional?

[hmelton]

I'm having no problems. Maybe it's something regional?

It must be regional...

And now it's being fixed. Just successfully loaded the fanfic I was trying to catch up on.

Decided to check on my "check site" and loaded the working links into

https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

It still saying Fanfic.net is down for everyone.

I use a satellite link from Arkansaw and it usually down links along the East Coast not sure where the above check site link is.

Thanks everyone.

I was aggravated and curious, out of habit I keep an eye on Latency and internet flow and I've noticed a lot of abrupt changes in the flow of web pages in the past 2 or 3 months.

HDM

[Labster]

The revolution will not be Flanderized.

[Kilroy]

As of yesterday morning (1/9/21), I can no longer save chapters via the normal Ctrl-S Save As command. The results are 10 KB files with Cloudflare related messages. The Save Page WE add-on still works, but gives warnings now.


Kilroy

[classicdrogn]

Yeah, FFN seems to be having some kind of meltdown, or else has declared war on people keeping an offline copy of anything hosted there. FanFicFare and Keepfic(?) have been broken for days, though Fan Fiction Down Loader was still working at last report.

[aku]

Quoting Raimond Eisele (Author of FFDL) on the CaerAzkaban mailinglist on something which might be related (extended security checks by FFn via CloudFlare). I noted the OP mentioning the 5 sec delay which is also a characteristic of the browser loop below is about.

Hi,
I've observed something interesting:
It's working without problems on my win 10 machine with up to date firefox/chrome/Edge.
But a different machine in my network (same public ip) with an older Linux and chrome 68 is stuck in the "checking your browser" loop.
Rai

Am 8. Januar 2021 00:21:06 MEZ schrieb Karen Lewellen <klewellen@shellworld.net>:
>One  thing to keep in mind about cloudflare is that they have a zero
>trust policy.
>Meaning, that if one person has ever tried to reach ffn outside of
>their parameters, then every single member is now  considered a danger.
>That includes software programs trying to work around the problem as
>well.
>I look forward to reading ideas, but frankly?
>the only person who can address this issue is whomever makes decisions
>at ffn, because they are paying cloudflare to block you.
>Karen

>On Thu, 7 Jan 2021, parkerx wrote:
>>
>> Hello and a request. So last night this problem popped up, an endless
>loop when trying to get a FF.net story loaded and continues today, with
>both Firefox and Safari being affected. Looking around the net, I see
>various reasons given, and I've done the few fixes recommended that
>seemed applicable. I've checked the date and time, and disabled and
>enabled Ad-block as well, it is the only common add on between the two
>browsers, and after doing so Firefox did load one chapter of a story
>before going back to the five second checking browser loop. Any fix
>would be greatly appreciated, this is very annoying. 

And later nzaman:

As I suggested to someone else on a different thread: go back to the page before the Cloudflare check, reload the page, then try the link again. It does a check every day on my machine; this is what I have to do when it gets stuck in a loop

[Kilroy]

(Blows much dust off thread)

As of 10:00 AM EDT Jul-13-2024, https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com reports that Fanfiction.net has been down for two days.


Kilroy

[Norgarth]

at least partly. some pages I can access, others I can't

EDIT: ignore me, I forgot the stories I had gotten were on different websites. *facepalm*

[classicdrogn]

Internittent, apparently - I was able to load several chapters from one of Rorchach's Blot's fics on m.FFn a few hours ago, but both before and since couldn't get anything from there or normal FFn. FFn is generally my fic site of last resort anyway, but I still agree that it's a PITA when something I'm looking to read is only available there and it's down.

If you know the URL (from a bookmark, link, or your browser history) you can probably find it on fichub, though often a week or so out of date.

[Disruptor]

There is this post on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Pm0XR8fhQ


It has been a whilte since I posted.


I do read some fics over on FicWad

[robkelk]

Wow, that guy has no idea how to make a vlog post. Way too much dead air, no screenshots.

tl;dr: they forgot to renew their domain name registration.

[Tennie]

tl;dr: they forgot to renew their domain name registration.

I actually saw speculation in that direction earlier on places like the r/FanFiction Subreddit, but I guess we now actually have confirmation that such is indeed the case.

And yeah, given their seemingly laissez-faire approach to moderation and whatnot, something like this happening was certainly a possibility at the very least (a possibility that, in this case, ended up actually happening).

The administration team really needs to step up their game when it comes to dealing with these types of situations!

[Disruptor]

So link time.
FicWad
https://ficwad.com/

AO3
https://archiveofourown.org/

Two back up fanfic sites with Fanfiction.net down

[Bob Schroeck]

Wow, that guy has no idea how to make a vlog post. Way too much dead air, no screenshots.

I didn't get that far. As soon as I heard that voice I stopped the video. He was too painful to listen to.

[classicdrogn]

FFn is up again. Well, m.FFn at least, the WWW site is even more annoying so I don't use it unless only the mobile version is down.

[robkelk]

The main site's back, too.

As for annoying, just put the browser into Reader View once the page has loaded. (In Firefox, tap the F9 key.) All the extraneous stuff goes away and you can actually select and copy text.

[Tennie]

FictionPress (the owners of FFN) put out a statement on Twitter yesterday claiming to explain what happened:

FictionPress ✍️
@FictionPress
http://fanfiction.net is serving millions of active readers/authors world-wide and a fictional site hosting stories and poetry. We have a very strict policy on sexual content and sexual content related to child abuse. On July 12th,
@GoDaddy
deactivated dns-resolution for our domain due to a dozen links of fictional content they deemed broke their "ChildAbuse" policy. Godaddy sent the dozen links to us on July 9th.

Our human staff between July 10th 6PM-10PM PST time validated every link and removed the content that broke our policies regarding sexual abuse content. The list even contained a link that contained no sexual abuse of any kind. That why we human verify every abuse report. We officially replied to Godaddy on July 12th even though content was removed on July 10th.

Yet on July 12th, our http://fanfiction.net domain was disconnected from the dns eco-system, with zero notification/communication, causing 100% operational disconnection including email, website, app login, etc.

Our staff called in to Godaddy on July 12th and was assured 24 hour reply. It has been more than 24 hours and we are still getting no response.
@Godaddy
, please expediate the review process so we can get dns back again. Again, we received zero communication on the dns deactivation and our communication is limited to childabuse@godaddy.com email which we have replied to on July 12th, and July 13th via multiple emails.

To our users, please be patient as we work hard to get this resolved but as detailed above, this is entirely out of our control at the moment.

If you personally know anyone at
@Godaddy
, please help us and let them know to expediate this matter and establish bi-directional contact with us.

@GoDaddy

@GoDaddyHelp

@GoDaddyPro

The "TL;DR" version is that GoDaddy reportedly received (potentially spurious) notice of there being some rather disgusting stuff being posted on FFN, and threatened to deactivate the site's DNS unless the offending content was removed.  The FFN admins reportedly fully complied ahead of the deadline and reported accordingly, but the revocation took place anyway.

Of course, I also want to hear what GoDaddy has to say on the manner in order to at least get their side of the story (though I can also imagine it easily devolving into a sort of "he said/she said"-type situation...).

[Labster]

Yeah so this sounds like the classic GoDaddy experience. I 100% believe FFN’s account of what happened, and also 100% blame FFN for the outage, because they use GoDaddy services. In 2014 it might barely be excusable but it’s 2024 and everyone should know better.

GoDaddy is cheap (you get what you pay for … well slightly less), and opinionated — they’ll drop you like a lead balloon if you fall far outside their moral code (generally US conservative). They are a good choice if you’re relatively mainstream and/or don’t care too much about uptime. Which is not terribly compatible with a pit of vipers.

[Mamorien]

GoDaddy [...] are a good choice if you’re relatively mainstream and/or don’t care too much about uptime. Which is not terribly compatible with a pit of vipers.

Or, for that matter, a pit of voles. (Speaking of, does anyone know why voles particularly, or must that, in the immortal words of John Sladek, "remain a mystery, an imponderable conundrum, a riddle wrapped in a dark enigma, an impenetrable veil of cloud-shrouded o'ercast secret of Sphinx-mute nature"?)

[classicdrogn]

Because they are also venomous, with a side of verminous, and yet can still appear cute individually when calm.

I don't know about anyone else, or her original justification, but the phrase itself I got from Camwyn, back when she was writing Hellblazer: Hogwarts and that Ghostbusters story I can't remember the title of.

[Mamorien]

Because they are also venomous, with a side of verminous, and yet can still appear cute individually when calm.

Huh. You really do learn something new every day.

I don't know about anyone else, or her original justification, but the phrase itself I got from Camwyn, back when she was writing Hellblazer: Hogwarts and that Ghostbusters story I can't remember the title of.

If you mean the HP crossover, it was Who Ya Gonna Owl?. And I should know; I'm the one suggested it to her, back when Milliways crackchat was on AIM (I think it was before noca was there, even).