AO3 Content Discussion (2016)

I'm making an outline for this overwhelming page, one I've called a very tentative (and not very organic) title. See talk page.
AO3 Content Discussion is a fan conversation that was rekindled by the OTW's October 2016 membership drive, which ran from October 13 to 19., 12 October 2016 20:09:14 EDT.
Anonymous antishippers immediately commented on the initial drive announcement post to accuse the AO3 of hosting "kiddie porn",, 13 October 2016 02:49AM EDT. but far more nuanced conversations about AO3 history, content rules, and harassment issues were already happening on Tumblr and elsewhere. The discussion during the fund drive may have increased awareness of ongoing AO3 issues and introduced the phenomenon of antishipping to OTW members who were not on Tumblr. Some fans refer to the discussion as "purity wank" and Tumblr trends that gave rise to it as "purity culture".
==Overview==
A wide range of types of fanfiction has been proposed for additional moderation and/or removal at AO3. The list includes:
* underage fiction that does not violate US laws
* non-con fiction
* fiction depicting abusive relationships. The OP objected to many different types of fanfiction themes. There were 14,000 notes in response to the OP. This is part of one of the threads addressing unhealthy/abusive relationships.
* racist fiction/Interracial kinkSee . Some members of FFA had a different interpretation of the story. See and .
* Transmisogyny.
* Hatespeech
* abusive comments in response to fanfic (ex: telling a writer they are sick, that their writing is terrible, they should kill themselves or say they hope they are beaten to death or are raped)
This list is by no means comprehensive. In 2016, one fan tagged her tumblr post with the following list:
Note that this increased moderation and removal would be in addition to AO3's existing TOS and policies against abuse and harassment and AO3's tagging and content warnings policies.
In some of the discussions the lines between removing content (aka fiction) vs removing speech (aka comments) are blurred. Some fans, for example, are more comfortable with the fiction remaining, properly tagged, while comments that are perceived to be harassing or hate speech should be removed.See post tagged: #this is an excellent point #my personal POV is that the author comments should have been deleted but not the responses #while the fic should have remained up #but that is just me. Others feel that both content and speech should be part of a more robust AO3 moderation. A third group is annoyed that people they consider trolls have put AO3 into a difficult position. And of course, there are those who feel the current moderation suffices. 
In July 2016, rather than calling for AO3 to start banning fanfiction, one fan attempted to solicit suggestions for improving AO3's existing Abuse tools to reduce the amount of harassing comments. Since AO3 does not allows users to message each other directly, comments to existing fic are the main methods of communication. And while AO3 allows authors to turn off anonymous comments and moderate or delete, this was seen as relying "on each individual user’s actions instead of a comprehensive commitment to protecting users."
Four months later the post had only received 82 notes on Tumblr while similar posts calling for banning of fanfiction had received 14,000 notes on Tumblr.. A good number of the 14,000 notes were in opposition to banning fanfiction. Magnusbene was well known, especially on FFA, for being misogynist and age-ist and for sounding generally unhinged and squicked by gay sex. Their later addendum to the post reads: "[nov 2018 add-on]: i’m still right and people disagreeing with me are abuse apologist freaks so jot that down! i’ll never apologize or say i made a mistake with this post, you can die mad about it because i’ll never delete this post or my blog just so this post can keep on trucking. this’ll be the last post on tumblr when it’s shut down in 2030 and i will still be right/people getting off to simulated abuse can all perish and i won’t change my mind. ao3 participates i’m abuse culture and distributing child porn among other things, and you all fandom elders are freaks if not literal abusers! xoxo" (On the other hand, the more popular post was by a notoriously wanky fan whose posts were widely hate-read, so a large--and often negative--response is to be expected.)
==Some Brief AO3 History==
The AO3 was first proposed in May 2007 by Astolat. Her post was one of many in LiveJournal fandom reacting to the commercial startup FanLib, which had tried to recruit some fanfic writers for its new fic archive. LiveJournal fandom was unimpressed by the company's desire to profit off of the popularity of fanfic, not to mention a sales pitch to get buy-in from copyright holders saying things like "All the FANLIB action takes place in a highly customized environment that YOU control" (see :File:FanLib info.pdf). Astolat's post An Archive Of One's Own set out some guidelines for a fan-controlled archive in opposition to the dystopian future she saw in FanLib: no ads, no restrictions on content, and a commitment to fic as fair use. To realize this vision, the Organization for Transformative Works was created.
Fans had other (often long-standing) reasons for wanting to help build a new multifandom archive. Strikethrough happened a few weeks after astolat's initial post, driving home the point that it was not safe to rely on commercial entities to preserve fan culture. See Beginnings of OTW: 2007-08 Comments for more comments regarding AO3 and OTW's creation.
[links to other pages]
==AO3's TOS==
Summary of and link to Terms of Service
==Summarization of Some Primary Topics and Arguments==
==History: Similar Discussions==
===Regarding Content on AO3===
===Other Electronic Platforms ===
FF.net, Strikethrough, Livejournal, Usenet
===Way Back: Discussions Regarding Age Statements and Warnings===
Zines, age statements, the porn debate of 1977
==Subjects and Content That Have Been/Are Banned on Archives==
Some archives have out-and-out banned certain kinds of fanworks.
Other fanworks have been discouraged and disparaged (with varying degrees of strength and success), depending upon the climate of the time.
See List of Content Banned by Archives.
As one fan explained:
Others have pointed out that there may be a greater social costs when certain topics are banned:
==Context: Political and Social Climate ==
Social Justice, Social Justice Warrior, Triggers, fandom's greater visibility and desire for legitimacy, political polarization, Fandom as a Safe Space, Underground, Underage, chan, Rape, Noncon, Race and Fandom
==An Age/Experience Divide?==
[pipistrellus], October 18:
havingbeenbreathedout, October 20:
==Fandom as a Safe Space: Safe for Whom?==
Others offer up their own definition of safe spaces:
Archive of Our Own as a "safe space" for readers/consumers: [need quotes]
Archive of Our Own as a "safe space" for writers and other fanwork creators: [need quotes]
==Fanworks as Subversive==
At FFA:
==Group Polarization==
==Fans Policing Other Fans as Opposed to Outsiders Policing Fans==
See Fandom Police.
==Squicks, Kinks, Don't Like Don't Read, YMMV, Darkfic, Using the Delete Key and the Back Button==
Differing likes, dislikes, tolerance, intolerance.
==The Role That Technology Plays==
As fandom migrates from platform to platform, the technological tools they use to interact with one another change how they interact with one another. Oftentimes a sense of myopia creeps into fan communication, when a platform becomes so popular that users expect the rest of the Internet to model itself after their chosen platform. An example would be when bloggers began using the Livejournal or Dreamwidth platforms created an expectation that certain posts should be "friends locked". On tumblr, there is extensive commentary regarding how tags are used to comment as well as filter out or exclude objectionable content.
* Fandom Does Not Use Technology. Technology Uses Fandom - a 2014 essay about fandom on Good Reads
Some fans find it puzzling that the banning debate persists when technology offers the ability to filter our objectionable content at a detailed level:
==The Role of Tumblr==
Tagging, dogpiling, difficulties in having a conversation, tagging as a source of misunderstanding and other things, visibility, lack of ability to control
==Common Tags==
* purity wank - see Purity Culture in Fandom
* policing women
* fandom police
==Meta/Further Reading: Censorship, Fear, and Content==
[need more examples as this is woefully incomplete]
===1977===
* Open Letter by Mary Lou Regarding Explicit Fanworks (1977)
===1981===
* Open Letters to Star Wars Zine Publishers by Maureen Garrett (1981)
===1983===
* letters and editorials regarding an early slash zine (1983)
===2001===
* "One index finger on the mouse scroll bar and the other on my clit": slash writers' views on pornography, censorship, feminism and risk, specifically and (2001)
===2007===
* Squee, non-squee, and puzzlement (2007)
=== 2016: The AO3 Discussion===
* by snekplay on tumblr - August 10, 2016
*; archive link by joestrummin on tumblr - circa August 11, 2016
* I See A Lot Of Posts Going Around (Suppressing Women's Sexuality) by buckyballbearing on tumblr - August 15, 2016
* honestly I don’t even care why ao3 was created by magnusbene on tumblr - September 7, 2016
* discussions at the OTW October 2016 Membership Drive:
** ("thank you Ao3 for not supporting censorship whose only justification is paranoia?") - thread started October 13, 2016
** ("If you want your pain respected, but refuse to respect mine, you are a bully. The pain we experienced as children does not give us the freedom to hurt others, now.") - thread started October 14, 2016
** ("the comments have certainly reminded me of why the AO3 is so important - an archive where we own the servers" ) - thread started October 15, 2016
* by magnusbene on tumblr - October 14, 2016
* by thebibliosphere on tumblr (responding to an ask by cindy-svensson) - October 15, 2016
* by decepticonfetti on tumblr (responding to a reply by magnusbene) - October 16, 2016
* by notanadult on tumblr - October 16, 2016
* by magnusbene on tumblr - October 17, 2016
* by cereta on dreamwidth - October 17, 2016
* by cannibalcuisine on tumblr - October 17, 2016
* by fozmeadows on tumblr - October 19, 2016
* by selenay on dreamwidth - October 20, 2016
* by supraliminally on tumblr - October 20–21, 2016
* AO3 & Censorship by stopthatimp on tumblr - October 22, 2016
==Further reading==
* I think the general mindset and culture of Tumblr is effecting what people choose to write about in fic (2015 post)
* Fandom is not your safe space (2015 post)
* AO3 & Censorship (2016 post)
* The Three Laws of Fandom (2016 post)
* every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’ (2016 post)
* List of Content Banned by Archives
==References==
Category:Archive of Our Own
Category:Fandom Occurrences
Category:2016 Events