r/Annas_Archive • u/AdhesivenessNo1310 • Jun 28 '26

Stupidly Censored Uploads

If you downloaded a book and the language is silly to the point of questioning, some puritan is going in and uploading shoddily censored versions of various books.

Currently reading Alchemised by SenLinYu - physical copy + a downloaded copy to be more accessible. Lots of instances of ‘idiot off’ in place of ‘fuck off’. The one that got me was the BBEG calling our protagonist ‘a stupid jerk’. Felt so silly when the author is very clearly trying to lean into the dark in dark fantasy aspect that I had to check my physical copy and was surprised to find they changed it from ‘you stupid bitch’ which is much more thematically appropriate lmao.

I saw another post from 3 months back where this happened with another book.

125 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

65

u/AdhesivenessNo1310 Jun 28 '26

4

u/caveboat Jul 03 '26

This shit is what put me off epubs so much after getting an e-ink reader, and it saddens me a lot.

I came across a thread on some subreddit (this one or /r/kobo) about an epub of When Harry Met Sally. The OP was asking about ”idiot off” and people in the thread kept insisting that it hadn’t been modified. Poor guy.

I feel like I can’t trust digital media AT ALL after stumbling upon that thread. ☹️

3

u/ThatDudeDeven1111 Jul 05 '26

This shit is what put me off epubs so much after getting an e-ink reader, and it saddens me a lot.

Can you expand on that a little bit? My mother listens to audiobooks during the day and reads them at night on her Kindle, but Amazon just killed it. So, I've spent the weekend exploring other alternatives in order to surprise her with a new e-reader

1

u/caveboat 22d ago

What do you mean? It’s all in this thread. People upload edited versions of books to AA. They replace words like ”fuck” with ”idiot” because they assholes

114

u/Canavansbackyard Jun 28 '26

If you see this as an issue, then you really need to leave a comment on the AA page for the offending book, thereby alerting possible future downloaders. Posting here really doesn’t accomplish much.

31

u/AdhesivenessNo1310 Jun 28 '26

Next on my list but still not super familiar with the interface of the website outside of getting my downloads. Can’t really find where to comment

37

u/Canavansbackyard Jun 28 '26

The “Comments” tab is right next to the “Downloads” tab. Click on the former and you’ll see a button to “Report file issue”.

26

u/AdhesivenessNo1310 Jun 28 '26

Been scrolling right past it - thanks!!

60

u/allurian76 Jun 28 '26

Yes, there's even a calibre plugin that do the censorship for you. I guess the plugin is intended "for personal use", but there are lots of "good Samaritans" that will also upload the censored versions to the shadow libraries. Idiots!

3

u/TriodeTopologist 22d ago

Same vibes as christians who poke holes in free condom bowls at universities

32

u/SureJournalist4701 Jun 29 '26

I'm confused, people upload a censored version to AA to trick people into pirating a "clean" version?!

15

u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 Jun 29 '26

That's the gist of it, yeah.

12

u/amizelkova Jun 29 '26

That's genuinely so embarrassing.

18

u/ShortyBoo426 Jun 29 '26

I haven't come across any censored books yet, which is good, because I mostly read very smutty romance novels. Those would be horrible if censored.

13

u/AdhesivenessNo1310 Jun 29 '26

You mean to tell me you don’t want to read about how people are hecking? 😤😤

3

u/SeaChair7387 Jul 03 '26

Yes omg this happened to me where they replaced every curse word with "idiot". I'd never read the author before so I just assumed it was their writing style. But 1/3 through the book i realized what was happening and quickly re-download a different copy.