#also anyone who wants ao3 to do more to moderate content AND opposes their donation drives is shooting themselves in the foot

[angels-heap]

To the anon who just sent me an ask: I’ll properly answer that later, when I’m not trying to write other stuff, but in short: I’d rather read fanfiction on a site where dodgy stuff is required to be tagged than on a site where it’s technically not allowed and the people who are hellbent on writing it anyway will just sneak it in there untagged. I’ve spoken about my childhood experiences online before, and once again: every single time I encountered something that I wasn’t developmentally ready to process, it was completely out of the blue (or very vaguely warned for) on FFN, presumably to avoid censorship. 

Your concerns are totally valid and I share them, but the fact remains that this whole issue is super, super complex and while I also wish there was a way to get rid of the small percentage of objectively fucked up fan content on sites like AO3 without far-reaching (and ultimately worse) consequences for individual fans and fan communities, it just isn’t that simple. Also, comprehensive sex ed could do so much more to prevent harm than AO3 ever could. Call your government representatives. 

AO3 is not a perfect website by any means, but I sure wish it had been around when I was a kid. And if I could change anything about it (besides separating the HL and HLVRAI tags), it would be adding better filtering features, not trying to restrict what can be published.