AO3 & Censorship

AO3 & Censorship is a meta essay written by stopthatimp about racist trolls harassing AO3 users, sometimes by posting hateful fanfic. The meta discussed questions of adapting AO3 content policy in light of this phenomenon and in the context of pushback against antishippers.
It was posted on October 22, 2016 on Tumblr and had 477 notes as of October 28.
During some of the reblogs, the discussions and responses expanded to include whether AO3 should ban certain types of controversial fanfiction such as noncon, dubcon, darkfic and underage fanfiction. Some of this expansion may have been due to then ongoing antishipper debates that were circulating on Tumblr at the time. As a result, there was much confusion among the participants, some conflation of issues and overall difficulty in tracking the various threads of the debate.
The essay was preceded by a series of posts that date back to 2014 where stopthatimp called for the removal of a hockey fic featuring interracial kinkSee . Some members of FFA had a different interpretation of the story. See and . and also supported the removal of a transphobic story.. Additional commentary on the story from 2014 can be found at and 
Stopthatimp later updated her post with suggestions on how AO3 could implement a policy to remove objectionable content.
The original post and her reblogs were seen by many to offer "measured, thoughtful criticism" and "a careful and analytic discussion of problems that the AO3 is going to face."
==The Essay==
==Reactions/Responses==
===Enforcement Questions===
[pageleaf tagged her reblog of the original post]
[serenadestrong responds to pageleaf]:
===Should The Archive Offer Storage Or Should It Curate Content? Or Perhaps Have Better Tools?===
[taraljc]:
[jkthinkythoughts]:
[book—wyrm]:
===Hosting is the Not the Same as Endorsing===
[madamehardy]:
===A Better Abuse Policy vs Content Curation===
[stopthatimp in response to taraljc]:
[taraljc in response to stopthatimp]:
[stopthatimp in response to taraljc ]:
[amireal2u in response to stopthatimp]:
[amireal2u]:
[stopthatimp in response to amireal2u]:
[amireal2u in response to taraljc]:
===AO3 Will Eventually Become Twitter: We Need To Be Prepared===
Some fans predicted that AO3 would eventually be overrun with harassers and hate speech, very much like Twitter. New content policies were therefore need order to preemptively protect fandom spaces.
From the original post:
[birdhead]:
Others pointed out the irony that the AO3 = comparison debate was taking place on Tumblr, a place often perceived to be filled with problematic content and harassment:
===AO3 Is Not Twitter: You Are Not Forced To View The Fic===
Many dismissed the AO3 = Twitter comparison:
[zz9pzza]:
[esteefee]:
[bomberqueen17]:
From FFA
[Anonymous 1]:
[Anonymous 2]:
===The Original Poster Reframes: Perhaps The Issue Is Not AO3 Policy. It Is The Discussion of AO3 Policy===
[stopthatimp]:
In a later post she referred to nianeyna's "call me a libertarian" post as an example of the type of discussion she was criticizing:
[sevensneakyfoxes]:
===Fandom As Libertarians?===
[From the original post]:
[nianeyna]:
Several commentators on FFA took issue with the description:
[Anonymous 1]:
[Anonymous 2]:
[Anonymous 1]:
[Anonymous 3]:
===Racial and/or Age Divide===
In August 2014, stopthatimp had reported an interracial kink story to AO3 abuse and demanded that the story be removed. She received a response from the AO3 Abuse Committee that the story had been reviewed, and they had found that the content did not violate TOS. stopthatimp shared the staffer's response along with her thoughts to her tumblr.
These 2014 themes were reflected in themardia's response to stopthatimp's October 2016 "AO3 & censorship post":
[themardia]:
[themardia in response to nianeyna's libertarian post]:
[sevensneakyfoxes in response to themardia and stopthatimp's posts]
[sevensneakyfoxes]:
On older fans:
===Tough Choices===
[mamaliza]:
[nomercles]:
[that's-what-sidhe-said]:
===We're Not Asking For A Ban. Just An Extension Of Existing Moderator Powers===
===To Each Archive Their Own===
==Related Discussions==
Additional posts were made by some of the participants, offering up specific examples of harassment and expressing their ongoing concerns over what they felt was AO3's failure to preventing abuse and harassment. In response one fan wrote:
[irresistible-revolution]
==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 Content Discussion (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
* Illiterati
* The Literate Union
* Critics United
* FanDomination.Net Content Control and Weeding Guidelines
* Warriors for Innocence
* Strikethrough
==References==
Category:2016 Meta
Category:Organization for Transformative Works Meta
Category:Meta on Tumblr
Category:Social Media Feature