Russia blocks top fanfiction platform in continued crackdown on ‘LGBT propaganda’

The Russian authorities blocked Ficbook, one of Russia’s largest online fanfiction archives, on Friday, following demands by media regulator Roskomnadzor that the website take down stories containing “LGBT propaganda”, Ficbook announced on Friday.

Ficbook, a Russian-language platform based in Latvia, described the blocking of their website in Russia as “a misunderstanding” that they were “working to fix”.

Founded in 2009, Ficbook functions as an archive of user-generated stories based on real-life celebrities and fictional characters and divides its content into “het” stories — ones featuring heterosexual pairings — and “slash” and “fem-slash” stories, which feature same-sex relationships. The latter two categories were flagged by Roskomnadzor as part of the Kremlin’s campaign against so-called “LGBT propaganda”.

The platform attempted to create a separate website for stories featuring same-sex relationships, Slashbook, in December 2022, after Russia toughened its “LGBT propaganda” laws, but the website is no longer working.

In April 2023 Russia blocked another major fanfiction archive, Archive of Our Own, which featured fanfiction written in multiple languages, reportedly after the platform refused to take down “pornographic stories written in Russian that involve teenagers”.

Russia’s continued censorship of LGBT content was prompted by legislation providing for fines of up to 4 million rubles (€40,000) for disseminating so-called “LGBT propaganda”, as well as a Supreme Court ruling in November that branded the “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organisation”, effectively banning it and making pro-LGBT activity punishable by up to 10 years in prison.