What Does Do Not Repost Mean?
Fandom CultureA creator's instruction forbidding uploading their work elsewhere — re-uploading art to other sites, copying fics to other platforms, or feeding work into apps. Reposting without permission is one of fandom's firmest taboos.
Do Not Repost in Practice
The norm exists because reposting severs a work from its creator: stripped credit, lost context, and engagement harvested by strangers, often on for-profit aggregator sites running ads against stolen fic or art. Artists watermark and caption 'do not repost' because image theft to Pinterest, TikTok, and merch mills is constant; fic writers battle mirror sites that scrape AO3 wholesale, one of the drivers behind waves of archive-locking. Fandom distinguishes sharply between reblogging or linking (sharing the original, encouraged) and reposting (copying it, condemned). The rise of AI scraping intensified the whole conversation and pushed many creators toward locked and gated spaces.
Example usage
"She found her fic reposted on one of those scraper apps with ads on every chapter, so now everything she writes is archive-locked."
Related Terms
Archive-Locked
Describes an AO3 work restricted to logged-in users only, indicated by a small lock icon. Guests without accounts cannot read it, and it is hidden from search engines.
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Crossposting
Publishing the same work on multiple platforms — AO3 and FanFiction.Net, or fic excerpts on Tumblr linking to the archive. Done by the author; unauthorized crossposting by others is reposting, a serious faux pas.
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Blanket Permission
A standing statement by an author granting general permission for transformative works of their fics — podfic, translation, art, or remixes — without needing to ask each time. Usually posted on their profile.
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Fanart
Visual art of existing media made by fans — illustrations, comics, paintings, digital pieces — spanning every style from quick sketches to gallery-grade work. Fanfiction's sister discipline.
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