My unpopular opinions

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call your voting location, they may also have a wheelchair you can borrow depending on where you will be voting.

Sometimes being the mum who exists in fandom spaces leads to awkward, even concerning, conversations. Such as the one which happened this morning. The mum of my daughter's best mate asked me if one of their mutual friends had sent her a specific message. This message was a link to a fic on ao3, if this had been a G rated fic this conversation would not have happened. It was not G rated. It was an E rated fic. Our kids aren't even 12 yet. As it happens, both of our kids have their internet access heavily locked down and monitored. They have phones because of how their school manages homework. The mutual friend, however, is not so monitored. Or she wasn't, given what her mum found she's about to be. This kid had found a fandom, joined it, and found it chock full of antis. The fic had been sent to her by one of them as an example of the sort of terrible people out there who need to be harassed and attacked because they wrote a smutty story.

Someone thought it was appropriate to send written porn to an 11 year old to encourage her to attack the author.

This resulted in a very awkward conversation where I had to explain to multiple horrified parents the anti culture that is becoming so prevalent. The fact that there are adults who use that purity message to groom kids. The way they escalate and how it bleeds into real life. One parent told me she'd wondered why her 14 year old was suddenly concerned about the two year age gap between her parents. The more I explained, the more absolutely ludicrous it sounded and the more baffled these poor mums looked. More than once I was told "but the characters aren't real, it's really weird but it isn't hurting anyone". Which is the point. The fictional situation isn't hurting anyone. The person who sent porn to an 11 year old is.

Was the person who sent it the author? Doubtful, that thing was tagged in the extreme. Was the person who sent it an adult? Almost certainly. The parent who's child received the original message has found more concerning stuff and gone to the police, but from the language the person doing the sending was in the US. We aren't. Did my daughter receive it? No, she isn't interested in that fandom and therefore wouldn't have bothered with it. Is this the fault of the author? No, they didn't send the link, they didn't ask to be harassed, they wrote a story and put it on ao3, the website created in response to rampant censorship and designed to allow for all kinds of fiction. Is this the fault of the parents? Partially, they should have been looking at their daughter's internet use and clocked what was happening sooner. Is this the fault of the child? No, she's 11, she didn't know better.

This has been a difficult day. Multiple parents have had their eyes opened to parts of fandom culture they had no idea existed. And the thing of it is, they aren't concerned about the why of anti rhetoric. They don't care about the adults writing about teens or rape or incest or torture or any of the rest, because they looked at the clearly tagged and rated fics and figured that it worked the same as a warning on any streaming service. They only cared because some utterly vile individual decided to expose their child to something this girl might not have looked at for years.

Proshippers did not cause what I have spent afternoon helping several sets of parents navigate. Antis did. Normally I'm fairly quiet about the whole debate because I just want to get on with my life and share my experiences. Today I got dragged into that mess in my every day life and the adults in the equation didn't react the way Antis like to think they would. They didn't condemn the author. They condemned the anti who shared the work with a preteen.

Adult antis are predators, full stop.

Adult antis will often claim they're minors, so they can get into groups and servers with kids--but sometimes they'll even do so whole admitting they're adults. They'll insist you can deem a person "good" or "bad" by their fictional interests. Then they'll insist they're a "good" person, a safe one, because they only like "good" fiction. This escalates into sending you pornographic material, insisting it's just so you can harass an evil artist together.

No adult should ever be discussing explicit sexual material with a minor like that. It's not educational, they're not a safe or trusted guardian/teacher. If they insist they are, please show your chats to a real life trusted adult.

This is why purity culture is so dangerous. It hides behind reactionary prejudice to create a safe haven for predators, while harming victims. This is how you get cults. This is how you get groomers in fandom spaces.

Back during the worst of the VLD fandom and antis hating on Sheith Josh Keaton(Va for Shiro) told the fandom to chill and stop harassing Sheith shippers and learn what pedophilia actually was. The antis immediately turned on him, harassing him and threatening to report him to CPS as a danger to his children and have them taken away.

So not only would antis not listen to a creator saying “Don’t harass people” they would in fact turn on them.

Get rid of the myth that being a proshipper is about your comfort level with dark/"illegal" ships.

People posting large age gaps without a CW first is the main reason I unfollow people. They are solidly a no for me.

Proshipping is about your comfort level with people bullying the shippers.

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. When it was founded the people made a promise to its users. “We will host all transformational works(fanfic) allowed by US law.” This promise came about after other sites had routinely purged fanworks without warning. Not just the same things people call for moderation on now but far more reaching and random. Like FF.net purged ALL mature/NC17 fics from their site, they also purged and banned the ENTIRE genre of songfics(written equivalent of fan made music videos made by putting song lyrics between paragraphs of story prose)

Ao3 bringing in any sort of content moderation or limits on what fics they will host would be breaking that initial promise to their users.

I guess if you’ve never woken up and found chunks of your fave fandom, some fanworks you yourself created just gone, because whoever was hosting it decided to change the rules on you, you wouldn’t understand. And unless you primarily read fics at sites other than Ao3 because of their determination to keep that promise you won’t have to.

see that is the thing that i really do not get, Like the thing that i cannot understand about this arguement is that bad moderation means no moderation should be allowed? It’s ok for AO3 to host racist fanfics and child porn, because the alternative is just random deletions? Like why is the alternative to no moderation bad moderation? Why do AO3 defenders keep on acting like the only options are either no moderations at all, or else it will be fanfics deleted without rhyme or reason? Like why is the argument always in black and white extremes?

One. Ao3 does not host child porn. You can stop with that lie right the fuck now. Child porn(or the more correct term Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material) is when someone has a child under their control and forces them to perform sexual acts and either photographs or films it. It is a recorded documentation of abuse and is in fact illegal(and therefore not allowed to be hosted on Ao3) It is wrong, immoral, and illegal because a real live, breathing child with thoughts, and feelings is being hurt and will have to live with the memory of their abuse for the rest of their lives.The term does not apply to non-photorealistic fanart, or to written words depicting events that did not actually happen(meaning there is no victim and no-one has to live with the memory of the events).  Treating either fanart or fanfic as the same as  real life abuse is an insult and dis-service to every single child that has ever been sexually exploited because you think their suffering is equivalents to lines on paper.  That you think the immorality of CSEM is because it makes you feel “icky” and not because they were being hurt and exploited.  People writing fanfic of two teenage characters making out is in no way equivalent to a real life child having their rape recorded, but I routinely see people calling for moderation on Ao3 acting like it is.

Two. As for the racist(and every other kind of bigotry that can be depicted) I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust the various fandom communities to make a set of standards that aren’t just one group of fans forcing their will and preferences onto the rest of fans. I don’t know what fandoms you’ve been in, but I’ve seen fandoms with interracial ships where if you have the black character top you’re being racist because it’s playing into racist mandrigo tropes. But at the same time you would have people claiming that having the black character bottom you’re also being racist for making the black man submissive. So are both depictions/options racist, are neither of them, or are people just trying to make their personal fic preferences/interpretations some sort of moral issue and force people to cater to them?  I’ve been in fandom communities where the admin/moderators refused to let anyone post fics that didn’t match their preferences(despite claiming to be friendly to all fics) So it’s very much coming from a place of experience that says trying moderate Ao3 based on racism, or any other problematic metric/rubric you want to use will just end up being used to silence people(including other fans of color)

Racism exists in fandom because we live in a racist society and that will filter into ALL media, including fanfic. Trying to remove so called racist fanfic won’t make society any less racist. All it does is give a tool for bullies to try to control and harass people. Everyone has their own personal biases some conscious, some only in their subconscious that they haven’t bothered to unpack  Trying to moderate content based on standards like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc… will inevitably lead to the moderators own personal biases leaking through resulting in uneven, inconsistent moderation resulting nothing but hurt feelings and fighting. 

Third. I would just like to mention just how heartless and unempathic you sounds when you act like random mass deletions and purges are no big deal. You have no idea how much it hurts to wake up and find something you created just gone. To find large swaths of fics that you enjoyed again and again, that you found comfort in, deleted never to be recovered. To say nothing of when Livejournal caved to a bunch of right-wing christian evangelical trolls and deleted a bunch of users and communities. People were devastated. people lost support communities and were frantically trying to find the friends they had made in those communities.

I know it may be hard to believe but fiction and art do not cause harm just by existing. A story that may be upsetting and triggering for one person, may bring healing and comfort to another, because everyone brings their own set of experiences and persepctives into every story they read, and therefore each takes something slightly different from it.  But you and every other person calling for moderation on Ao3 act a story causes harm to everyone, again just by existing.  It’s an insane perspective that makes no sense to me. A story I am not forced to read can’t hurt me any more than someone practicing a different religion can hurt me.

I’ve seen many posts where someone will say that AO3 hosts CP and then other people get very angry and say that it doesn’t.

Here’s the thing, CSEM is a specific legal term that applies to real children as outlined above. That is clearly not happening on AO3.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that AO3 isn’t…uh…playing with fucking fire when it comes to obscenity laws involving minors. This is probably what most people are referring to when they say CP, they just aren’t using the specific legal verbiage.

Any material that satisfies this three-pronged test may be found obscene.

1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion);

2. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse); and

3. Whether a reasonable person finds that the matter, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Federal law prohibits both the production of obscene matter with intent to sell or distribute, and engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene matter using or affecting means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including the use of interactive computer services. For example, it is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison.

Federal statutes specifically prohibit obscenity involving minors, and convicted offenders generally face harsher statutory penalties than if the offense involved only adults.

Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene. This statute offers an alternative 2-pronged test for obscenity with a lower threshold than the Miller test. The matter involving minors can be deemed obscene if it (i) depicts an image that is, or appears to be a minor engaged in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse and (ii) if the image lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. A first time offender convicted under this statute faces fines and at least 5 years to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

In addition to facing imprisonment and fines, convicted offenders of federal obscenity laws involving minors may also be required to register as sex offenders. Furthermore, in some circumstances, obscenity violations involving minors may also be subject to prosecution under federal child pornography laws, which yield severe statutory penalties

Now, if you really think that “the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards” will not find the 11.000 works in the p*dophilia tag on AO3 break obscenity laws, I’m not sure what to tell you.

Y’all, there are “original work” authors coming from porn sites to post this shit on AO3 because the porn sites are cracking down on underage fic.

I and many other people get angry at the people going around claiming that Ao3 hosts child pornography for a very simple reason. These people are lying. It has been explained to them what CSEM is and how the fictional written works on Ao3 do not count as CSEM. But those people who want to censor Ao3 do not care and at times have in fact referred to the fictional content on Ao3 as CSEM. They do this because they know CSEM and child pornography are highly emotionally charged terms that fill people with disgust and anger and make them likely to agree with them. It’s lying, misinformation, and emotional manipulation and that should in fact cause anger.

Now good job on actually looking at the relevant laws regarding obscenities as those are the ones that would apply to Ao3. I do need to make a few corrections about your understanding of those laws.

First of all Section 1466A of Title 18 is not applicable to anything hosted directly on Ao3’s servers. I am going to quote part of it and bold it to help you understand why.

“Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene”

Did you get it? Ao3 hosts written words, not visual images. Anything that Ao3 hosts is only going to have the 3-pronged Miller Test applied, not the lesser 2-prong test.

Although the 2-prong test for visual images doesn’t apply to Ao3 I would like to point out that just meeting the conditions of one prong is not enough for a work to be deemed criminally obscene. Take a look at some of the gross, sexual things that have been depicted on South Park featuring their 4th grade protagonists. Or this BL manga available at the New York Public Library that features high school boys engaging in BDSM pratices https://nypl.overdrive.com/media/1181949 And if there’s been any legal challenges on either of them on the basis of obscenity I haven’t heard of them.

And just like with the visual works, in written word just because a work meets one part of the Miller test if it fails to meet either of the other two prongs it will not be considered criminally obscene. And again we have historical precedence that demonstrates just because work contains depictions of pedophilia, underage sex, CSA, etc … that does not make it obscene. We have Lolita, Stephen King’s It, The Lovely Bones and who knows how many others because regular books don’t have Ao3’s tagging system. Goodreads has a list of books about pedophiles(both fiction and non-fiction but that relies of readers so might not be complete) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/40126.Books_about_Pedophiles

Is it possible that some of the fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia would meet the legal definition of obscenity? yeah sure I guess. The same holds true to any fic labeled explicit regardless of whether it’s het, queer, xeno etc. Are all of them going to meet that standard? Not a chance. I feel like you and a number of others are really underestimating just how high a bar it is for something to be deemed legally obscene in the US.

And now here’s the really fun part. Let’s say some really overzealous prosecutor decided to to trawl through all 11,000 fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia(actually let’s be nice and cut it down to just the ones rated explicit as they’re more likely to cross the threshold and that cuts about 4000 off the list) and finds a couple they think meet the criteria for criminal obscenity. Ao3 and the OTW still will not be the ones in trouble for it.

That’s because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, often referred as the 26 words that created the internet.

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

So even if some prosecutor wanted to prosecute a fic on Ao3 as obscene that would be going against the individual author not Ao3 or OTW as a whole. Ao3 might get in trouble if they refuse to remove the fic while prosecution is happening, or if they refuse to comply with a subpoena to provide information about the author. But not really for the fic being there to begin with.

Now I am going to address the tags you included because i believe the point I was making flew entirely over your head.

My point was that a fictional story does not cause harm simply by existing. In order for a fictional story to have any impact on anyone(positive or negative) there has to be a deliberate, conscious decision to read it. A textbook that sits on a shelf gathering dust doesn’t teach anyone anything. And an unread fic that’s sitting on a list alongside hundreds of other fics doesn’t cause anyone any harm.

Did you get it? Ao3 hosts written words, not visual images. Anything that Ao3 hosts is only going to have the 3-pronged Miller Test applied, not the lesser 2-prong test.

This isn’t true. AO3 also hosts art and videos. I left that in there specifically because I have seen art in those underage tags.

Those aren’t hosted on AO3’s servers. They are embedded images that are hosted elsewhere and linked to. If any of them meet the requirements for obscenity the prosecutors will be contacting the actual hosting site. Not Ao3. So again anything actually hosted on Ao3 will be subject to the Miller test, not the two-prong test regarding visual depictions of minors.

I’m glad we can all agree that there is fic & art that would be considered child porn on AO3 both by a layman’s definition as well as a legal definition of obscenity laws for minors. You state at AO3 isn’t legally liable for it (although for good or ill I don’t think that precedent is on solid ground), but that’s isn’t really the conversation that the OP is trying to have. They’re having a cultural conversation and you’re having a legal one. I think it would help if you’d both have the same conversation.

Except no I didn’t agree that Ao3 allows and hosts something the average lay person would consider to be child porn. Because to the average layperson when they hear the term “child porn” their mind goes to the horrific sexual abuse suffered by real children that is then photographed and/filmed for sale. They are not thinking about words on paper or screen, nor are they thinking about lines on paper for drawing.

When people go around attempting to claim that Ao3 hosts “child porn” they are attempting to pull the same scare tactic conservatives use to attack books like Genderqueer, It’s Perfectly Normal, and even A Court of Night and Fury. It’s an attempt to anger and scare people into doing what they want and conform to their preferences and personal comfort zone.

What the OP and everyone demanding Ao3 restrict content need to learn is that their personal comfort level, and their personal feelings of disgust are not the absolute guide to morality, decency, and legality.

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. When it was founded the people made a promise to its users. “We will host all transformational works(fanfic) allowed by US law.” This promise came about after other sites had routinely purged fanworks without warning. Not just the same things people call for moderation on now but far more reaching and random. Like FF.net purged ALL mature/NC17 fics from their site, they also purged and banned the ENTIRE genre of songfics(written equivalent of fan made music videos made by putting song lyrics between paragraphs of story prose)

Ao3 bringing in any sort of content moderation or limits on what fics they will host would be breaking that initial promise to their users.

I guess if you’ve never woken up and found chunks of your fave fandom, some fanworks you yourself created just gone, because whoever was hosting it decided to change the rules on you, you wouldn’t understand. And unless you primarily read fics at sites other than Ao3 because of their determination to keep that promise you won’t have to.

see that is the thing that i really do not get, Like the thing that i cannot understand about this arguement is that bad moderation means no moderation should be allowed? It’s ok for AO3 to host racist fanfics and child porn, because the alternative is just random deletions? Like why is the alternative to no moderation bad moderation? Why do AO3 defenders keep on acting like the only options are either no moderations at all, or else it will be fanfics deleted without rhyme or reason? Like why is the argument always in black and white extremes?

One. Ao3 does not host child porn. You can stop with that lie right the fuck now. Child porn(or the more correct term Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material) is when someone has a child under their control and forces them to perform sexual acts and either photographs or films it. It is a recorded documentation of abuse and is in fact illegal(and therefore not allowed to be hosted on Ao3) It is wrong, immoral, and illegal because a real live, breathing child with thoughts, and feelings is being hurt and will have to live with the memory of their abuse for the rest of their lives.The term does not apply to non-photorealistic fanart, or to written words depicting events that did not actually happen(meaning there is no victim and no-one has to live with the memory of the events).  Treating either fanart or fanfic as the same as  real life abuse is an insult and dis-service to every single child that has ever been sexually exploited because you think their suffering is equivalents to lines on paper.  That you think the immorality of CSEM is because it makes you feel “icky” and not because they were being hurt and exploited.  People writing fanfic of two teenage characters making out is in no way equivalent to a real life child having their rape recorded, but I routinely see people calling for moderation on Ao3 acting like it is.

Two. As for the racist(and every other kind of bigotry that can be depicted) I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust the various fandom communities to make a set of standards that aren’t just one group of fans forcing their will and preferences onto the rest of fans. I don’t know what fandoms you’ve been in, but I’ve seen fandoms with interracial ships where if you have the black character top you’re being racist because it’s playing into racist mandrigo tropes. But at the same time you would have people claiming that having the black character bottom you’re also being racist for making the black man submissive. So are both depictions/options racist, are neither of them, or are people just trying to make their personal fic preferences/interpretations some sort of moral issue and force people to cater to them?  I’ve been in fandom communities where the admin/moderators refused to let anyone post fics that didn’t match their preferences(despite claiming to be friendly to all fics) So it’s very much coming from a place of experience that says trying moderate Ao3 based on racism, or any other problematic metric/rubric you want to use will just end up being used to silence people(including other fans of color)

Racism exists in fandom because we live in a racist society and that will filter into ALL media, including fanfic. Trying to remove so called racist fanfic won’t make society any less racist. All it does is give a tool for bullies to try to control and harass people. Everyone has their own personal biases some conscious, some only in their subconscious that they haven’t bothered to unpack  Trying to moderate content based on standards like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc… will inevitably lead to the moderators own personal biases leaking through resulting in uneven, inconsistent moderation resulting nothing but hurt feelings and fighting. 

Third. I would just like to mention just how heartless and unempathic you sounds when you act like random mass deletions and purges are no big deal. You have no idea how much it hurts to wake up and find something you created just gone. To find large swaths of fics that you enjoyed again and again, that you found comfort in, deleted never to be recovered. To say nothing of when Livejournal caved to a bunch of right-wing christian evangelical trolls and deleted a bunch of users and communities. People were devastated. people lost support communities and were frantically trying to find the friends they had made in those communities.

I know it may be hard to believe but fiction and art do not cause harm just by existing. A story that may be upsetting and triggering for one person, may bring healing and comfort to another, because everyone brings their own set of experiences and persepctives into every story they read, and therefore each takes something slightly different from it.  But you and every other person calling for moderation on Ao3 act a story causes harm to everyone, again just by existing.  It’s an insane perspective that makes no sense to me. A story I am not forced to read can’t hurt me any more than someone practicing a different religion can hurt me.

I’ve seen many posts where someone will say that AO3 hosts CP and then other people get very angry and say that it doesn’t.

Here’s the thing, CSEM is a specific legal term that applies to real children as outlined above. That is clearly not happening on AO3.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that AO3 isn’t…uh…playing with fucking fire when it comes to obscenity laws involving minors. This is probably what most people are referring to when they say CP, they just aren’t using the specific legal verbiage.

Any material that satisfies this three-pronged test may be found obscene.

1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion);

2. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse); and

3. Whether a reasonable person finds that the matter, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Federal law prohibits both the production of obscene matter with intent to sell or distribute, and engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene matter using or affecting means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including the use of interactive computer services. For example, it is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison.

Federal statutes specifically prohibit obscenity involving minors, and convicted offenders generally face harsher statutory penalties than if the offense involved only adults.

Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene. This statute offers an alternative 2-pronged test for obscenity with a lower threshold than the Miller test. The matter involving minors can be deemed obscene if it (i) depicts an image that is, or appears to be a minor engaged in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse and (ii) if the image lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. A first time offender convicted under this statute faces fines and at least 5 years to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

In addition to facing imprisonment and fines, convicted offenders of federal obscenity laws involving minors may also be required to register as sex offenders. Furthermore, in some circumstances, obscenity violations involving minors may also be subject to prosecution under federal child pornography laws, which yield severe statutory penalties

Now, if you really think that “the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards” will not find the 11.000 works in the p*dophilia tag on AO3 break obscenity laws, I’m not sure what to tell you.

Y’all, there are “original work” authors coming from porn sites to post this shit on AO3 because the porn sites are cracking down on underage fic.

I and many other people get angry at the people going around claiming that Ao3 hosts child pornography for a very simple reason. These people are lying. It has been explained to them what CSEM is and how the fictional written works on Ao3 do not count as CSEM. But those people who want to censor Ao3 do not care and at times have in fact referred to the fictional content on Ao3 as CSEM. They do this because they know CSEM and child pornography are highly emotionally charged terms that fill people with disgust and anger and make them likely to agree with them. It’s lying, misinformation, and emotional manipulation and that should in fact cause anger.

Now good job on actually looking at the relevant laws regarding obscenities as those are the ones that would apply to Ao3. I do need to make a few corrections about your understanding of those laws.

First of all Section 1466A of Title 18 is not applicable to anything hosted directly on Ao3’s servers. I am going to quote part of it and bold it to help you understand why.

“Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene”

Did you get it? Ao3 hosts written words, not visual images. Anything that Ao3 hosts is only going to have the 3-pronged Miller Test applied, not the lesser 2-prong test.

Although the 2-prong test for visual images doesn’t apply to Ao3 I would like to point out that just meeting the conditions of one prong is not enough for a work to be deemed criminally obscene. Take a look at some of the gross, sexual things that have been depicted on South Park featuring their 4th grade protagonists. Or this BL manga available at the New York Public Library that features high school boys engaging in BDSM pratices https://nypl.overdrive.com/media/1181949 And if there’s been any legal challenges on either of them on the basis of obscenity I haven’t heard of them.

And just like with the visual works, in written word just because a work meets one part of the Miller test if it fails to meet either of the other two prongs it will not be considered criminally obscene. And again we have historical precedence that demonstrates just because work contains depictions of pedophilia, underage sex, CSA, etc … that does not make it obscene. We have Lolita, Stephen King’s It, The Lovely Bones and who knows how many others because regular books don’t have Ao3’s tagging system. Goodreads has a list of books about pedophiles(both fiction and non-fiction but that relies of readers so might not be complete) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/40126.Books_about_Pedophiles

Is it possible that some of the fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia would meet the legal definition of obscenity? yeah sure I guess. The same holds true to any fic labeled explicit regardless of whether it’s het, queer, xeno etc. Are all of them going to meet that standard? Not a chance. I feel like you and a number of others are really underestimating just how high a bar it is for something to be deemed legally obscene in the US.

And now here’s the really fun part. Let’s say some really overzealous prosecutor decided to to trawl through all 11,000 fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia(actually let’s be nice and cut it down to just the ones rated explicit as they’re more likely to cross the threshold and that cuts about 4000 off the list) and finds a couple they think meet the criteria for criminal obscenity. Ao3 and the OTW still will not be the ones in trouble for it.

That’s because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, often referred as the 26 words that created the internet.

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

So even if some prosecutor wanted to prosecute a fic on Ao3 as obscene that would be going against the individual author not Ao3 or OTW as a whole. Ao3 might get in trouble if they refuse to remove the fic while prosecution is happening, or if they refuse to comply with a subpoena to provide information about the author. But not really for the fic being there to begin with.

Now I am going to address the tags you included because i believe the point I was making flew entirely over your head.

My point was that a fictional story does not cause harm simply by existing. In order for a fictional story to have any impact on anyone(positive or negative) there has to be a deliberate, conscious decision to read it. A textbook that sits on a shelf gathering dust doesn’t teach anyone anything. And an unread fic that’s sitting on a list alongside hundreds of other fics doesn’t cause anyone any harm.

Did you get it? Ao3 hosts written words, not visual images. Anything that Ao3 hosts is only going to have the 3-pronged Miller Test applied, not the lesser 2-prong test.

This isn’t true. AO3 also hosts art and videos. I left that in there specifically because I have seen art in those underage tags.

Those aren’t hosted on AO3’s servers. They are embedded images that are hosted elsewhere and linked to. If any of them meet the requirements for obscenity the prosecutors will be contacting the actual hosting site. Not Ao3. So again anything actually hosted on Ao3 will be subject to the Miller test, not the two-prong test regarding visual depictions of minors.

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. When it was founded the people made a promise to its users. “We will host all transformational works(fanfic) allowed by US law.” This promise came about after other sites had routinely purged fanworks without warning. Not just the same things people call for moderation on now but far more reaching and random. Like FF.net purged ALL mature/NC17 fics from their site, they also purged and banned the ENTIRE genre of songfics(written equivalent of fan made music videos made by putting song lyrics between paragraphs of story prose)

Ao3 bringing in any sort of content moderation or limits on what fics they will host would be breaking that initial promise to their users.

I guess if you’ve never woken up and found chunks of your fave fandom, some fanworks you yourself created just gone, because whoever was hosting it decided to change the rules on you, you wouldn’t understand. And unless you primarily read fics at sites other than Ao3 because of their determination to keep that promise you won’t have to.

see that is the thing that i really do not get, Like the thing that i cannot understand about this arguement is that bad moderation means no moderation should be allowed? It’s ok for AO3 to host racist fanfics and child porn, because the alternative is just random deletions? Like why is the alternative to no moderation bad moderation? Why do AO3 defenders keep on acting like the only options are either no moderations at all, or else it will be fanfics deleted without rhyme or reason? Like why is the argument always in black and white extremes?

One. Ao3 does not host child porn. You can stop with that lie right the fuck now. Child porn(or the more correct term Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material) is when someone has a child under their control and forces them to perform sexual acts and either photographs or films it. It is a recorded documentation of abuse and is in fact illegal(and therefore not allowed to be hosted on Ao3) It is wrong, immoral, and illegal because a real live, breathing child with thoughts, and feelings is being hurt and will have to live with the memory of their abuse for the rest of their lives.The term does not apply to non-photorealistic fanart, or to written words depicting events that did not actually happen(meaning there is no victim and no-one has to live with the memory of the events).  Treating either fanart or fanfic as the same as  real life abuse is an insult and dis-service to every single child that has ever been sexually exploited because you think their suffering is equivalents to lines on paper.  That you think the immorality of CSEM is because it makes you feel “icky” and not because they were being hurt and exploited.  People writing fanfic of two teenage characters making out is in no way equivalent to a real life child having their rape recorded, but I routinely see people calling for moderation on Ao3 acting like it is.

Two. As for the racist(and every other kind of bigotry that can be depicted) I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust the various fandom communities to make a set of standards that aren’t just one group of fans forcing their will and preferences onto the rest of fans. I don’t know what fandoms you’ve been in, but I’ve seen fandoms with interracial ships where if you have the black character top you’re being racist because it’s playing into racist mandrigo tropes. But at the same time you would have people claiming that having the black character bottom you’re also being racist for making the black man submissive. So are both depictions/options racist, are neither of them, or are people just trying to make their personal fic preferences/interpretations some sort of moral issue and force people to cater to them?  I’ve been in fandom communities where the admin/moderators refused to let anyone post fics that didn’t match their preferences(despite claiming to be friendly to all fics) So it’s very much coming from a place of experience that says trying moderate Ao3 based on racism, or any other problematic metric/rubric you want to use will just end up being used to silence people(including other fans of color)

Racism exists in fandom because we live in a racist society and that will filter into ALL media, including fanfic. Trying to remove so called racist fanfic won’t make society any less racist. All it does is give a tool for bullies to try to control and harass people. Everyone has their own personal biases some conscious, some only in their subconscious that they haven’t bothered to unpack  Trying to moderate content based on standards like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc… will inevitably lead to the moderators own personal biases leaking through resulting in uneven, inconsistent moderation resulting nothing but hurt feelings and fighting. 

Third. I would just like to mention just how heartless and unempathic you sounds when you act like random mass deletions and purges are no big deal. You have no idea how much it hurts to wake up and find something you created just gone. To find large swaths of fics that you enjoyed again and again, that you found comfort in, deleted never to be recovered. To say nothing of when Livejournal caved to a bunch of right-wing christian evangelical trolls and deleted a bunch of users and communities. People were devastated. people lost support communities and were frantically trying to find the friends they had made in those communities.

I know it may be hard to believe but fiction and art do not cause harm just by existing. A story that may be upsetting and triggering for one person, may bring healing and comfort to another, because everyone brings their own set of experiences and persepctives into every story they read, and therefore each takes something slightly different from it.  But you and every other person calling for moderation on Ao3 act a story causes harm to everyone, again just by existing.  It’s an insane perspective that makes no sense to me. A story I am not forced to read can’t hurt me any more than someone practicing a different religion can hurt me.

I’ve seen many posts where someone will say that AO3 hosts CP and then other people get very angry and say that it doesn’t.

Here’s the thing, CSEM is a specific legal term that applies to real children as outlined above. That is clearly not happening on AO3.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that AO3 isn’t…uh…playing with fucking fire when it comes to obscenity laws involving minors. This is probably what most people are referring to when they say CP, they just aren’t using the specific legal verbiage.

Any material that satisfies this three-pronged test may be found obscene.

1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion);

2. Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse); and

3. Whether a reasonable person finds that the matter, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Federal law prohibits both the production of obscene matter with intent to sell or distribute, and engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene matter using or affecting means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including the use of interactive computer services. For example, it is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison.

Federal statutes specifically prohibit obscenity involving minors, and convicted offenders generally face harsher statutory penalties than if the offense involved only adults.

Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene. This statute offers an alternative 2-pronged test for obscenity with a lower threshold than the Miller test. The matter involving minors can be deemed obscene if it (i) depicts an image that is, or appears to be a minor engaged in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse and (ii) if the image lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. A first time offender convicted under this statute faces fines and at least 5 years to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

In addition to facing imprisonment and fines, convicted offenders of federal obscenity laws involving minors may also be required to register as sex offenders. Furthermore, in some circumstances, obscenity violations involving minors may also be subject to prosecution under federal child pornography laws, which yield severe statutory penalties

Now, if you really think that “the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards” will not find the 11.000 works in the p*dophilia tag on AO3 break obscenity laws, I’m not sure what to tell you.

Y’all, there are “original work” authors coming from porn sites to post this shit on AO3 because the porn sites are cracking down on underage fic.

I and many other people get angry at the people going around claiming that Ao3 hosts child pornography for a very simple reason. These people are lying. It has been explained to them what CSEM is and how the fictional written works on Ao3 do not count as CSEM. But those people who want to censor Ao3 do not care and at times have in fact referred to the fictional content on Ao3 as CSEM. They do this because they know CSEM and child pornography are highly emotionally charged terms that fill people with disgust and anger and make them likely to agree with them. It's lying, misinformation, and emotional manipulation and that should in fact cause anger.

Now good job on actually looking at the relevant laws regarding obscenities as those are the ones that would apply to Ao3. I do need to make a few corrections about your understanding of those laws.

First of all Section 1466A of Title 18 is not applicable to anything hosted directly on Ao3's servers. I am going to quote part of it and bold it to help you understand why.

"Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene"

Did you get it? Ao3 hosts written words, not visual images. Anything that Ao3 hosts is only going to have the 3-pronged Miller Test applied, not the lesser 2-prong test.

Although the 2-prong test for visual images doesn't apply to Ao3 I would like to point out that just meeting the conditions of one prong is not enough for a work to be deemed criminally obscene. Take a look at some of the gross, sexual things that have been depicted on South Park featuring their 4th grade protagonists. Or this BL manga available at the New York Public Library that features high school boys engaging in BDSM pratices https://nypl.overdrive.com/media/1181949 And if there's been any legal challenges on either of them on the basis of obscenity I haven't heard of them.

And just like with the visual works, in written word just because a work meets one part of the Miller test if it fails to meet either of the other two prongs it will not be considered criminally obscene. And again we have historical precedence that demonstrates just because work contains depictions of pedophilia, underage sex, CSA, etc . . . that does not make it obscene. We have Lolita, Stephen King's It, The Lovely Bones and who knows how many others because regular books don't have Ao3's tagging system. Goodreads has a list of books about pedophiles(both fiction and non-fiction but that relies of readers so might not be complete) https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/40126.Books_about_Pedophiles

Is it possible that some of the fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia would meet the legal definition of obscenity? yeah sure I guess. The same holds true to any fic labeled explicit regardless of whether it's het, queer, xeno etc. Are all of them going to meet that standard? Not a chance. I feel like you and a number of others are really underestimating just how high a bar it is for something to be deemed legally obscene in the US.

And now here's the really fun part. Let's say some really overzealous prosecutor decided to to trawl through all 11,000 fics on Ao3 tagged with pedophilia(actually let's be nice and cut it down to just the ones rated explicit as they're more likely to cross the threshold and that cuts about 4000 off the list) and finds a couple they think meet the criteria for criminal obscenity. Ao3 and the OTW still will not be the ones in trouble for it.

That's because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, often referred as the 26 words that created the internet.

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

So even if some prosecutor wanted to prosecute a fic on Ao3 as obscene that would be going against the individual author not Ao3 or OTW as a whole. Ao3 might get in trouble if they refuse to remove the fic while prosecution is happening, or if they refuse to comply with a subpoena to provide information about the author. But not really for the fic being there to begin with.

Now I am going to address the tags you included because i believe the point I was making flew entirely over your head.

My point was that a fictional story does not cause harm simply by existing. In order for a fictional story to have any impact on anyone(positive or negative) there has to be a deliberate, conscious decision to read it. A textbook that sits on a shelf gathering dust doesn't teach anyone anything. And an unread fic that's sitting on a list alongside hundreds of other fics doesn't cause anyone any harm.

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. When it was founded the people made a promise to its users. “We will host all transformational works(fanfic) allowed by US law.” This promise came about after other sites had routinely purged fanworks without warning. Not just the same things people call for moderation on now but far more reaching and random. Like FF.net purged ALL mature/NC17 fics from their site, they also purged and banned the ENTIRE genre of songfics(written equivalent of fan made music videos made by putting song lyrics between paragraphs of story prose)

Ao3 bringing in any sort of content moderation or limits on what fics they will host would be breaking that initial promise to their users.

I guess if you’ve never woken up and found chunks of your fave fandom, some fanworks you yourself created just gone, because whoever was hosting it decided to change the rules on you, you wouldn’t understand. And unless you primarily read fics at sites other than Ao3 because of their determination to keep that promise you won’t have to.

see that is the thing that i really do not get, Like the thing that i cannot understand about this arguement is that bad moderation means no moderation should be allowed? It’s ok for AO3 to host racist fanfics and child porn, because the alternative is just random deletions? Like why is the alternative to no moderation bad moderation? Why do AO3 defenders keep on acting like the only options are either no moderations at all, or else it will be fanfics deleted without rhyme or reason? Like why is the argument always in black and white extremes?

One. Ao3 does not host child porn. You can stop with that lie right the fuck now. Child porn(or the more correct term Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material) is when someone has a child under their control and forces them to perform sexual acts and either photographs or films it. It is a recorded documentation of abuse and is in fact illegal(and therefore not allowed to be hosted on Ao3) It is wrong, immoral, and illegal because a real live, breathing child with thoughts, and feelings is being hurt and will have to live with the memory of their abuse for the rest of their lives.The term does not apply to non-photorealistic fanart, or to written words depicting events that did not actually happen(meaning there is no victim and no-one has to live with the memory of the events).  Treating either fanart or fanfic as the same as  real life abuse is an insult and dis-service to every single child that has ever been sexually exploited because you think their suffering is equivalents to lines on paper.  That you think the immorality of CSEM is because it makes you feel “icky” and not because they were being hurt and exploited.  People writing fanfic of two teenage characters making out is in no way equivalent to a real life child having their rape recorded, but I routinely see people calling for moderation on Ao3 acting like it is.

Two. As for the racist(and every other kind of bigotry that can be depicted) I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust the various fandom communities to make a set of standards that aren’t just one group of fans forcing their will and preferences onto the rest of fans. I don’t know what fandoms you’ve been in, but I’ve seen fandoms with interracial ships where if you have the black character top you’re being racist because it’s playing into racist mandrigo tropes. But at the same time you would have people claiming that having the black character bottom you’re also being racist for making the black man submissive. So are both depictions/options racist, are neither of them, or are people just trying to make their personal fic preferences/interpretations some sort of moral issue and force people to cater to them?  I’ve been in fandom communities where the admin/moderators refused to let anyone post fics that didn’t match their preferences(despite claiming to be friendly to all fics) So it’s very much coming from a place of experience that says trying moderate Ao3 based on racism, or any other problematic metric/rubric you want to use will just end up being used to silence people(including other fans of color)

Racism exists in fandom because we live in a racist society and that will filter into ALL media, including fanfic. Trying to remove so called racist fanfic won’t make society any less racist. All it does is give a tool for bullies to try to control and harass people. Everyone has their own personal biases some conscious, some only in their subconscious that they haven’t bothered to unpack  Trying to moderate content based on standards like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc… will inevitably lead to the moderators own personal biases leaking through resulting in uneven, inconsistent moderation resulting nothing but hurt feelings and fighting. 

Third. I would just like to mention just how heartless and unempathic you sounds when you act like random mass deletions and purges are no big deal. You have no idea how much it hurts to wake up and find something you created just gone. To find large swaths of fics that you enjoyed again and again, that you found comfort in, deleted never to be recovered. To say nothing of when Livejournal caved to a bunch of right-wing christian evangelical trolls and deleted a bunch of users and communities. People were devastated. people lost support communities and were frantically trying to find the friends they had made in those communities.

I know it may be hard to believe but fiction and art do not cause harm just by existing. A story that may be upsetting and triggering for one person, may bring healing and comfort to another, because everyone brings their own set of experiences and persepctives into every story they read, and therefore each takes something slightly different from it.  But you and every other person calling for moderation on Ao3 act a story causes harm to everyone, again just by existing.  It’s an insane perspective that makes no sense to me. A story I am not forced to read can’t hurt me any more than someone practicing a different religion can hurt me.

There are several ways that you can moderate AO3.

If you read a story and have strong opinions on it, e.g. you think it’s racist to write Adeline as a bully when she’s such an amazing hero character in the source material or you think that author CerseiFan69 writes such creepy stories that you never want to interact with them ever, it’s great that you’re thinking for yourself and trying to do some critical analysis.

You deserve the power to control your own reading experience, which AO3 gives you. However, I don’t trust you to tell the difference between a badly written story by a young writer who is black and wrote Adeline as a bully because Adeline’s accent reminds her of her real life high school bully, versus a badly written story by a writer who’s actually horrible. Likewise, you shouldn’t trust me to tell you which authors you should read as spine-chillingly excellent takes on dark content versus authors who make you want to scrub out your brain with steel wool.

I love the freedom of AO3, where I might write a bad story but at least I know that some moderator won’t judge me harshly and take it down.

If I may add onto this excellent breakdown of why AO3 does not censor anything users choose to put up:

OP, do you understand how many fucking people lost fanworks because companies went, “Oh, god, no, can’t have this queer fag shit here” and just wiped out archives and lj communities and personal webpages?

Do you understand how many of those fanworks were between fictional legal adults? Thereby meaning it DOESN’T fall under the bad faith CSA argument?

Do you understand that when you start with “Well, this deserves to be censored” it literally always leads to “and now let’s get those fucking queers.” Because it’s always the fucking queers. We are literally living through a new version of the Lavender Scare because fucksticks feel like we queers have too much power, so they’re trying to steal it back. And you’re over here fucking helping them with this, “Well, I won’t support an actual free speech archive of fiction because I find this thing they do objectionable, and so we should burn it all down because I don’t actually know how laws and fiction work.”

That’s you. That’s you doing that. You’re tying the laces of the boot on your fucking neck.

Honestly, what’s so fascinating to me about these kinds of responses calling for “moderation” on ao3 who invoke the black and white fallacy is that they always end up putting the goal posts in the wrong place.

How they believe it is;

But in actuality, the real situation looks more like this;

Obviously, the first isn’t possible on the surface web, but remember that dedicated CSEM websites are still up and running just because they evade detection on the dark web. AO3 is not like this, so it shouldn’t even factor in, and yet these people have no separation of fiction and reality if a low enough number is assigned to a bunch of colorful pixels.

The truth is that there IS NO NUANCE between “some deletions based on content” and “no deletions based on content”. Just ask anyone on this or similar posts who lived through strikethrough and boldthrough. The censors are NEVER satisfied with just one icky thing, they ALWAYS go for the next target until nothing but hayes code purity remains, and we know that for a fact because it’s what happens EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Censorship is Pandora’s box. Once you crack its lid open, it’s already too late.

Literally no-one is arguing that Ao3 should allow any and all content including actual illegal CSEM. It’s been pointed out numerous times to the people calling for censorship of Ao3 that putting CSEM on the site violates the ToS and will be deleted.

The argument is between

Group A: Ao3 should continue as it has hosting and allowing all fiction legal under US law.(keeping the status quo)

Group B: Ao3 should ban certain topics in fiction based on my personal assumptions about those topics and how they are depicted and why someone would write(which is always because they’re bad people)

mfers will say "im against book banning in schools and libraries!" and then turn around and say ao3 needs to be censored

The people arguing to ban and/or remove content from Ao3 are completely and utterly convinced that censorship is different when they do it.

This sounds ok in a kneejerk way, but it misses the point. CW mention of pedophilia Censorship is something regimes and political movements do. But libraries and websites do not censor, they curate. Most school libraries will not,for example, hold books promoting pedophilia that encourage children to get into sexual relationships with adults, because that would be inappropriate in the context of a school library. This is not censorship.

Equally, the political movements and regimes that ban e.g. LGBT+ books in opposition to a library's chosen curation are wrong because they are oppressing a marginalised group not because school libraries should stock every text on the planet no matter what. There are very good legal and ethical arguments why ao3 should not attempt to curate its content. This is not one of them. This is the clumsy argument the right wing wants us to make, the one that blurs the line between queer people and pedophiles, between texts we're defending and texts we're condemning but tolerating.

Unfortunately as long as there are people who are happy to label ships they dislike as “pedophilia” even if the characters involved are middle aged men in order to demonize the ship, and dehumanize the shippers to justify harassing them we can’t move forward.

In short the only ones blurring the lines between queer content and queer people and dangerous predatory pedophiles are the people demanding Ao3 change their content policies. All so they can wield some sort of power and control over other people in fandom. They might not be in power or in government but they absolutely do want to oppress other people even if it’s just by limiting their ability to create and share fiction. Yes it’s on a smaller scale than what governments do but it’s the same behavior and same justifications.

mfers will say "im against book banning in schools and libraries!" and then turn around and say ao3 needs to be censored

The people arguing to ban and/or remove content from Ao3 are completely and utterly convinced that censorship is different when they do it.

Content supporting BLM and Palestine are allowed on Ao3. It does however have to follow the rules of the archive by being transformative in nature. Characters discussing the issues, author notes stating their stances and opinions. Links to GoFundMe’s however are not allowed due to the absolute no monetizing of fanworks on Ao3 allowed. Ao3 was created to be a safe censorship free space for FANWORKS anything that is not a fanwork does not fall under what Ao3 was created to protect. Using it as a social media platform to spam slogans at people is a misuse of the service and their equipment.

How funny is to see in the fics summaries, notes and tags: "proshippers dni, proshitters dni" on Ao3. Seriously. Isn't it against ao3 ToS? It's fucking harassment, insulting people who are proshippers.

Antis will never learn, they even can't read the rules of the sites and can't write something like that to not insult us. I noticed that they also can't write like a normal writers without weird emojis, caps lock and other weird arrangements which is not comfortable to read.

And then when the fic gets reported and they’re told to remove the offending tags/summary they whine about “censorship@ because they don’t understand the difference between a fictional story and interaction between people.

And of course there’s the whole Ao3 being built for pro-shippers by pro-shippers so they’re breaking their own DNI’s just by being on the website