SaveOFMD Crew would like to offer our unreserved apologies.
SaveOFMD Crew would like to offer our unreserved apologies to everyone in the OFMD fandom for the harm caused by the poorly conceived week 2 call to action we posted yesterday.
The original call to action was as follows:
We are sharing this retracted graphic for accountability. All of the calls to action have been retracted.
It was inappropriate for us to recommend that users send large files of any kind to Max. It was doubly inappropriate for us to propose that fanworks—podfic or otherwise—would be suitable for this purpose. Finally, it was even more inappropriate to suggest that explicit works should be used for this purpose.
Without going into more detail that might seem like justification, it was never the original intent to call for fans to send other peoples’ work. The original idea was for someone in our Discord server to write and record a podfic specifically for this action, and the "explicit" part was thrown in during brainstorming. This plan didn't go forward, and yet pieces of it remained without being removed as they should have been, leaving the only logical conclusion to be that we were suggesting the use of fans’ podfic. Regardless of our intentions, we know that this is the message that we sent. The whole call to action was misguided, and should never have made it through our internal planning process.
The post was out for less than an hour, so we would like to reassure fic writers and podfic creators as much as possible that it is unlikely that our negligence resulted in any real action. No one at SaveOFMD Crew sent out any emails, neither with nor without attachments.
We at SaveOFMD Crew are canceling the remainder of our Pride month campaign. We have taken down the week 2 CTAs and will not be moving forward with weeks 3 or 4 either. For the remainder of June, we will be focused on doing right by the charitable efforts we have committed to support: the Fiber Arts Brigade and their auction for SAGE USA, as well as the separate SAGE USA #ThriveAsACrew fundraiser.
Past these commitments, we will be evaluating the future of our SOFMD community, and will also be working to identify exactly where and when we went wrong with this poorly conceived and executed plan. We know the root cause: we have been overworking and overreaching for some time, focusing on too many projects, at a time when some very active people in our server have had to step back due to various health and personal issues. We have been trying to do too much—and as a consequence, we disregarded the rules we set for ourselves when our group was founded.
Understanding why and how this happened is in no way an excuse for it having happened at all. However, this analysis is essential so that we can hold ourselves accountable.
We recognize and sincerely apologize for the harm that we have caused in the fandom, especially to the fanfic artists in our community. It absolutely does not reflect our values and it was an unacceptable message to put out into the fandom. We are taking this as a signal that it's time for us to step back before we make any further missteps.
Our accounts will continue to post for Pride Month, but purely in support of the charitable initiatives that we have already made a commitment to helping.
With our sincere regrets,
SaveOFMD Crew