#censorship ain't for ao3

[nartml]

Censorship is a very slippery slope.

Now, I know someone else re-blogged this and explained to you that if we start censoring one thing, it will inevitably escalate to censoring more, especially because ao3 is home to very controversial content.

And I'm not referring to the objectively fucked up stuff.

I'm referring to the decent 90% of the entire site, that is gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide. In a devastating chunk of the population's eyes, homosexuality is immoral, wrong and inherently fucked up.

Everyone's standards for "so fucked up it should be banned" are, more or less, different. So if we censor one thing, someone else will point out something that they vehemently disagree with and demand it gets the boot as well.

Those demands will either come to pass, or become at best, a constant pain in the ass, and at worst, genuine harassment.

Censorship will be detrimental to this site.

But, I'll let you in on something you might not know: Using the power of critical thinking, you can make the conscious decision not to read things that make you uncomfortable!!

See, there's this magical tool called a filter, and with it, you can easily exclude all the neatly organized tags you never want to come into contact with! It's actually the defining characteristic of ao3!

We're all used to being spoonfed content specifically tailored to us via impressively coded algorithms, but I pinky swear on my mama, it's pretty easy to get the hang of it!

At least in this way, you can leave the weirdos to their own devices whilst you 'consume' only the art that you deem acceptable.

No harm, no foul.

Hope this helps!

"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."

Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.

AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.

AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:

Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.

AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.

[coulsonlives]

Someone with a "proship dni" banner on their blog just liked this post of mine and I think I lost brain cells.

[titanusamarante]

Hey Proshippers, Listen

You know,  as someone who has been in fandom so long that I helped produce local fanzines and my childhood internet browser was Mosaic. I feel like I need to say some things. Proshippers would get a lot less flak if y'all tagged your stuff better. Most folks are mad at proshippers because a ton of y'all include the general fandom tags, so graphic incest/rape headcanons and problematic ship art shows up in normal searches, and folks get squicked at best at triggered at worst. And y'all have way too many variations of the 'proship' tag, so that gets around tag blocking. Also, I've seen a lot of proshippers picking fights by flooding antiship tags with proship content. Meanwhile the proship tags have like, one or two haters. Y'all are kind of the aggressors here. And for the goddess' sake, stop acting like someone hating an incest or lolishota smut fic/headcanon is somehow analogous to nazi book burning. It's REALLY not. I think most of the problem is that the unyielding hand of capitalism forced all of fandom to interact when in the old days it was a bit more spread out. Certain content had its own locked communites or even separate websites. The idea that incest and to be frank pedophilic ships were more 'welcome' back in the day by wider fandom is because that stuff wasn't right out in the open. You had to actively go looking for it via websites or groups dedicated to the pairing. So the groups around it were naturally more blasé about it. It was literally by design. Meanwhile general fandom could theorize and make silly crossovers and gen fics. Nowadays, fandom is a continent worth of ecosystems in four of five public parks. We need separate spaces again. It was healthier that way. Then you can theorize in one space and head on over to another for the spicy content you want. And Gen folks couldn't stumble on said content as easily. But in the meantime, stop the victim complex and baiting and tag your stuff properly. (No general tags, keep to your ship tags). Then your 'anti' problem will drop by a good bit. Get your edgelord (picking fights on purpose and actively try to trigger folks) problem under control and the number will drop further. Youll still get death threats, because this is the internet and because both sides have a serious edgelord problem. But, go pool your resources and make your own version of the lemon archive with a nice forum. Then when the death threats come, you can literally go 'why are you here then?' AO3's tagging system is neat in the meantime, but it still has issues. Also, before the threats come. I'm not an 'anti' (unless it's RPF, which is ACTUALLY dehumanizing). I know certain fiction ain't going anywhere, even if I consider it gross. Just tag it better, ffs.

BTW, y'all REALLY need to learn the difference between media criticism and 'ban this filth' puritanical screeds. I lived in the Bible Belt during the Satanic Panic. I KNOW what ACTUAL censorship cries look like. And yes, fandom does have some serious issues. Especially with racism and misogyny. You can also criticize things you like, because nothing is perfect.

[olderthannetfic]

I love being an admin of a small controlled group that transformed to a small controlled community, really nice. And I love it because I can see people being fucking stupid trying to enter. I bet they're (most of the time than not) the kind of people who also scream to four winds when AO3 take down they ko-fi links and or scream about the fact that AO3 fuctions with invitations instead of signups.

I say this because today I received an application to enter the group (is really simple, you just have to accept that the group is anti-radfem rhetoric/anti-censorship, that you know how to curate your own experience and a password that's located in the rules), but I rejected it because the person in question had a public post crying that their "good and original" stories don't receive enough engagement while fanfics (as the opposite of "good and original") received all the attention. Obnoxious as fuck. Of course I rejected it.

Then, minutes later, the same person sending the same application. But surprised, instead of the answer they put a long as essay that our "shitty group is just a circle jerk". Honey. If you act like this because of ONE single application rejection to an ONLINE PRIVATE community that you can't see... How sad is your life? But also, grow up and fix that attitude, it ain't good for relationships. Rejections happen. You just have to accept them and keep moving... Unless you chose being a asshole about it. As, like, people screaming about AO3 rules.

--

[sonicenvy]

An AO3 app? -- The next installment in my AO3 posting.

I'm going to preface this by telling you that I don't entirely understand the urge or need to have an app for everything, but then again, I am closer to 30 than 20, so maybe that's the difference. Moving on.

So I've seen a lot of people saying that they wish there was an AO3 app. Presumably these people read AO3 on their phones or tablets. The thing is, there is NO AO3 app. If you see an app in the App Store or the Play Store claiming to be an AO3 app, it is fake, and you should not download it.

Say it with me kids:

"ao3 does not have an app and will not have an app."

The thing is, there's a really good reason why it will never happen. If you've been on this site (tumblr) long enough you'll either remember or have heard about the great tumblr porn ban (aka the ban on "female presenting nipples"). Believe it or not there was time where the tumblr (official) policy on adult content was "go nuts, show nuts. whatever." <-- actual quote btw.

A big reason why the tumblr porn ban ever happened was because of the tumblr app, specifically, the tumblr app for iOS. Apple decided one day that they thought that the tumblr app contained too much "sensitive content" and they banned tumblr's app from the Apple App Store, until such time as tumblr took what they believed sufficient corrective action for this "issue." Apple also believed that tumblr's app was hosting CP, which they considered a violation of their TOS.

So, in response to Apple banning them from the app store (which did not effect current users of the tumblr app, only potential new tumblr users), tumblr rolled out the adult content ban, so that they could get re-instated on the App Store. Like many other new "features" and "updates" to this site, the roll out was clunky, badly done and deeply unpopular. It was easily one of the worst changes for this site, in no small part because of how clunky it was; lots of innocuous posts were incorrectly flagged, and many bloggers found their entire blogs flagged, with little recourse in the initial wake of the ban. Critically, this event saw a great many users on tumblr leave this platform for twitter. How this affected site culture is up to debate.

Why am I telling you this? Well, as I am sure you, as an AO3 user are well aware, AO3 hosts a great deal of "adult content," of many persuasions and forms. They are explicitly against censorship of any kind. The app store is NOT against all censorship. These are two conflicting values. Since AO3 (and by extension OTW) has no interest in purging content from their site on behest of a megacorp (which btw is also why they rely on donations only and don't serve advertisements), they have no interest in developing an app, given the potential for restrictions.

Besides, AO3's website is simple, clean, and mobile responsive. Why fix something that ain't broke??

But, wait, if you're the target audience I'm hoping to reach with this post, you still want an app for AO3 on your home screen!

Never fear, my app loving youngsters! There is a way for you to create an "app" icon on your iPad or iPhone's home screen for AO3 (or any other site you like really) Apologies Android users; I don't have an Android, so I can't show you something analogous to this on Android, and don't know if they have it. Ditto on Kindle Fire.

This tutorial will use both safari and Firefox*. I won't show you Chrome (derogatory) because I don't have it and don't use it.

*Side note, switching to Firefox today is a great thing that you can do for yourself. You can easily import all of your Chrome bookmarks if that's what worries you.

In Firefox:

Step 1. Visit AO3 in the Firefox browser.

Step 2. Tap the hamburger menu in the right hand side of the top ribbon to reveal the browser and page settings and options menu, and locate the "Share" option (highlighted in blue below):

Step 3. In the "share" menu popup, locate and tap the "Add to Home Screen" option (highlighted in blue below):

Step 4. Give your new "app" (secretly just a bookmark) a title. You can leave it as the default, but I suggest shortening it so that the entirety of it shows on your home screen. You can name it whatever you want.

In Safari:

Step 1. Visit AO3 in the Safari browser.

Step 2. Tap the share icon in the right hand side of the top ribbon and scroll down until you find the "Add to Home Screen" option (highlighted in green below). Tap this option.

Step 3. In the "add to home screen" pop up, type whatever name you want in the name field (highlighted in green below). You can leave it as the default, but I suggest that you change it to something shorter so it displays in full with the icon on the home screen.

Either way, you should end up with an icon on your home screen that looks like this:

This is not an "app" BUT it is an icon on your home screen. When you tap the icon, it takes you to the home page of AO3, in whatever browser you created the bookmark in. You can move it around however you'd like, just like a real app, and put it any folder you'd like.

So that's all I have for this chat.

See you again next time I get inspired to write an ao3 chat/tutorial post for newbies!

Final note, If any of my followers have Android devices or Kindle Fire devices and want to add a photo tutorial for this on those platforms to this post, please feel free to, since I don't have any devices with either of those OSes, and thus could not do that myself.

[underleveledjosh]

I can't believe that person is actually doubling down on the stance that it's wrong for a fanfiction website to ask for donations without making a performative monologue about how bad genocide is. Do they really need every single person and entity on the planet to step aside like Dora the Explorer to say, "Now remember! Genocide is BAD!" Yes, the situation is awful and there needs to be a ceasefire, but what do they think they're achieving by railing at AO3 Just Because and getting violent at random Tumblr users? People are just...

Yeah, exactly. There is a time and a place for everything. A site whose main goal is to maintain a censorship free site for fanfic ain't it. They focus on keeping the fics safe, and that's it. They had a pretty nasty security breach last year, so they absolutely need donations to make sure security is even better and as tight as possible.

Also, not everyone is comfortable talking about their political stances publicly, especially online, where a healthy and productive discussion is damn near impossible to come by. A lot of people prefer to keep their political beliefs their own personal business. Not everyone needs to be an activist, and just because they don't publicly state they support Palestine, it doesn't mean that they don't support Palestine. It means they keep their politics private, and I believe that people must respect that.

[blueflipflops]

Thats exactly whats I've been trying to say to people.

(Warning: Long rant under the cut. Don't need to read. Just frustrated and had to write. You can scroll past this :) )

With Spiderverse becoming 'mainstream' media, it brings in new fans to the already established fandom on obscure Spider-man comics. New fans who are eitheron their first time interacting with a fandom or just someone who hasn't delved as deeply in the fandom culture as we [old fans] have.

A lot of new fans who have only interacted with newer more 'sanctioned' more 'censored' media without ever delving deep enough as we do or just not as obsessed with analyzing [meta] media for the fun of it while discussing it with fellow fans [as one of the social rituals of fandom culture]. Some of these people are kids. Others are adults. But new fans would always get culture shocked when they enter an already established fandom with only [one] source with them. Now this doesnt mean poeple should know [this] or [that] amount of stuff to be part of a fandom, but they had clearly came with expectations that what they have is enough to carry them thru and Some would just not Listen that that is not the only source of media that interacts with this fandom.

That being said, as new fans come with expectations and are still used to censorships from their usual sites they engage with, (e.g. twitter, tiktok, etc.) They would expect the same level of Censorship and a Weird Sense of Morality being pushed upon fictional characters without any media analysis. And with the Marvel/ Spider-man/ Comic Fandom already established before the big censorship thing happened to the new sites they currently use, the fandom has its own thing for a long time and [Also] weren't used to being 'Mainstream' Media.

This would then trickle down to small problems that cause a lot of issues that old fans brushed off at first. One of the big issues Spiderverse Fandom has continuously brought up since the start of ATSV [2nd movie] was Spider-Punk's age and wheter or not was it [Moral] to ship him with Miles Morales, an Afrolatino 15 yr old character. [on PunkFlower]. A lot would claim it as ['Proship'] and would relentlessly shame people who make content for it [the ship]. Going as far as senting hate anons and death threats online for it. I was seriously appalled with the whole negativity and the absolute close minded, emptybrained uncreativeness of these people. I was also baffled at the fact that age gap is enough to get them Clutch Their Pearls. As an old [Comic] fan in both DC and Marvel, this is... weird for me who have seen absolutely brain damaging worse the fandom can offer. Me who occasionally delve thru the [Dead Dove: Do Not Eat] tags that are often featured in Many Fandoms. I have seen Way Way Worse than the percieved age gap between the two when I also have read a fic once about one character dating his grandfather (and sleeping with him or whatever). Fandoms have shipped Way More Problematic ships than that. I saw that one [nsfw] fic in [ao3] where they Really Emphasized the age gap thing and made it incest (did not actually read it but wow) They made Miles 12 and Hobie 22ish? Can't remember. Anyways. I saw that and thought 'Wow. That is One Petty Asshole. Go for it dude.' And Moved On with my life. I saw that fic and remember that one other DC fic where the robins are in a sexual relationship with Batman with the tags 'writing this to show people what incest really is' 'and to show that i can write whatever i want' and it was downright Nasty.

Anyways, listen, what im trying to say is that if they really wanted to make the ship Problematic then they WILL make it Problematic as fuck. You thought age gap was problematic? They would amp that shit up to 1000. Y'all ain't seen nothing yet. Why are y'all flaming on a ship that people make cute headcanons and little art to? I promise you there are some people in the fandom that has balls of steel who would take that as a fucking challenge.

Then the other ships. SpiderBite(? I dunno what their ship name is. Dont usually engage in that) and ChaiPunk. Both with one character in an established relationship. People push Morals on stuff on 'Oh but he's married!' And 'Oh but he has a girlfriend!' My dude. Thats what shipping is for. We're not pushing to make it canon. We're not Miguel here or the directors of this movie. We're just fans. We can pick canon that we [like] but we CANNOT pick WHICH is [canon]. We can like peices of canon and not like others but we cannot change what canon is. Especially with so much 'canon' in comic book fandoms.

Honestly, the fandom hasn't even have that much media literacy to begin with yet more people are coming in without thought and pushing [censorships] and [Morals] on characters and sending death threats over them. Makes me sad really. Like comic fandom is already shit on their fellow fans sometimes but this just made a whole new wave of assholes coming in to shit on people who loves the same media as them but not in way they do. We're all just devolving into monkeys, are we?

Again, there is nothing wrong with joining a new fandom but please do not send death threats to people for fictional characters about a fictional story. Also, please tag your shit [Properly] for the [safety] of others.

The Spiderverse fandom is clearly some people’s first fandom.

“Why are you shipping Peter and Miguel? Peter’s married. That’s cheating.”

BITCH I KNOW YOURE NOT SERIOUS- THEY ARENT REAL. YOU WONT DIE IF YOU SEE FANART OF THEM KISSING. GROW TF UP

[kaanbaltlak]

Man IDK I think a lot of people are conflicting various ideas in the discussion about "AI fanfics" and while yes, this discussion is important to have, we need to made a clear distinction between every element because the OTW have ONE element in mind to permit "AI fanfics" in the Archive and that element is flying over the head of many people.

Some discuss the ethical and legal aspect. With this I agree, that a lot of the scrapping is... (borderline) not-ethical, but it's still legal. At least in the fucking USA it is, so. Also, the "transformative" aspect is a tricky one. Some people are defining "AI fics" as "a regurgitation of someone else's ideas" and... you can say that about "human fanfic" too. Normies and haters say THAT about fics. So that's not a good definition at all, it doesn't help our case, and unless you can do a definition that won't have any repercussions to the legal state of fic, then "AI fics" are transformative. You can't like it, but that's how it is RN.

Some other people discuss this in the sense that an AI cannot be a fan and... Folks, that's a fucking stretch, okay? We all know that an AI ain't a fan. Jesus. And the OTW wasn't saying that the AI counts as the fan. For fuck's sake.

Some other people advocate for banning and IDK what the fuck tell you. Y'all know what banning does, right? Besides censorship, banning does nothing to stop the problem. People will just HIDE that their fic is an "AI" one. And y'all won't ever notice. Some will say it's was good, some will ditch the fic as a poorly written one. But we'll never know if it's "AI written" or not. And the "detection tools" are fucking garbage, so many false positives. With this one, the only thing we can ask for is tagging... Which ain't mandatory. So for this, we just have to ASSUME good faith. Assume that people aren't assholes and know etiquette. Just... Don't start more fearmongering nor harassment nor false accusations and such. The spam comment bot declaring some fics were "AI made" was enough. We don't need that coming from ACTUAL people.

Last thing is... There's a fan behind the AO3 account. The fan decided to prompt an AI to make a fic. The fan decided the output was fannish enough to put it on the Archive. I think that's what's behind the OTW saying that they "allow 'AI fics'" on the Archive. And if that's the case, I do agree. There's a fan behind all of it. There's a fan behind every single "bad and poorly written" fic, and this "bad and poorly written" fic now covers "AI made" ones.

Just some rough thoughts I needed to let out.

And I won't touch the "devaluing art" thing. I don't want to. I have enough with my Esthetic class. Bye.

[tboytoby]

really feel like we live in a society today. here is your requisite "get the fuck off my blog if you're against the a.o.3 censorship". I don't give a fuck if it's an archive. I don't care about the search feature offering the ability to weed out unwanted topics. pro-ship, inc*st and r*pe fiction works should never be allowed to have a platform. much less the primary website in which fanfiction is hosted.

if anything, I'm just disappointed the candidate in question didn't outright abolish the works altogether

edit: hey are you looking at this? good. when did I ask for your input. I know what I said and I don't owe you an argument. AO3 is for hobbying writers, I know that. I post on there girl I ain't stupid. original works are allowed to contain all aforementioned content because they were clearly made with the purpose of exploring darker media in a fictional sense. I don't LIKE it, but I don't have to. it crosses the moral bounds when you bastardise other people's fictional works, often content created as children's media, that I have a problem. thanks mwah mwah

[emperorsfoot]

Squik - Why it's important:

So, I was talking with one of my coworkers yesterday about censorship vs. preservation of cultural media. Which of course launched me onto singing the praise of AO3 and how it is an archive that preserves works, yes, mostly fandom transformative, but also public domain works, and how the comprehensive tagging allows people to be their own censors and filter out media they might find "triggering or squik".

That is exactly how I phrased it, "triggering or squik".

He had never heard that word before and asked me to define and spell it. So I launch into my old spelling be ways. "Squik, S-Q-U-I-K, squik. Wow, that Catradora fic really made me squik, I wish I had filtered out the tag." And then I went on to explain to him that "squik" is a word used to refer to something that makes you uncomfortable or is upsetting and you do not want to see it if you do not have to. But you don't have real trauma accosted with it. The reaction is not as extreme as a trigger.

And his face just lit up! It was like I had revealed to him the holy grail!

We then launched into a tangent on mental health (I had no idea he was struggling with mental health issues) and how he felt like he had imposter syndrome because he never had any trauma in his past but XYZ made him extremely upset and gave him anxiety, but he just kept telling himself he was being "too sensitive" and had to just "man up and get over it" (we talked about toxic masculinity too, but this post ain't about that).

The conversation ended with him vowing to tell his therapist about the word squik and now that he had a word to describe his level of discomfort and upset, he was optimistic that his therapist could help him more efficiently and his mental health could move forward.

So anyway, "squik" is an important word to describe a concept that is relevant to more than just fandom and fandom spaces, and adding it to the lexicon of regularly used words in daily life IRL can and will benefit mental health.

[blepsweirdfandomthoughts]

So I popped onto the ao3 Tumblr and...censorship? On AO3? I have some thoughts.

I've been reading ao3 for around...4, 5 years at this point.

I've seen fluffy stuff, I've seen smutty stuff, I've seen fluffy smut, I've seen things that is cursed beyond all hell.

Do I want to read those dead dove do not eat fics? No. Is the solution then censorship? No.

If I don't want to read a gory/very explicit fic,

1. It is tagged as very gory, explicit, dead dove do not eat, so I skip over it.

2. Just use the tags system on the side to not include any of these fics. It's actually fairly easy to use, once you get over the brief intimidation of all the buttons and search boxes.

Censorship, in some cases, is ok. Bleep out curse words on kids programming. Sure.

But this is a case where censorship goes beyond all the legitimately gory stuff. What do we count as censored material? All the sex? BDSM? Furry? A/B/O? LGBTQ?

Books get banned for the weirdest reasons. 1984 was banned in the US for being communist, while also being banned in the USSR for being too pro American.

And just because a fanfiction has risqué content doesn't automatically mean it's going to be complete crack and shameless smut. Evern if the fics just a giant ball of plotless porn, there are tags for that. I've learned about bdsm, consent, tropes in fiction, and writing itself through ao3 itself better than some books out on the shelves, making ludicrous amounts of money despite them being complete trash. (Lookin at you E.L James)

IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ IT, DONT READ IT.

You're not obligated to read these fics if it makes you uncomfortable. If you want to read it because it makes you happy, go right ahead. If others want to read it because it makes them happy, you have no authority to say that they can't because it makes you uncomfortable.

Furthermore, these fics are a sign of dedication, a labor of love, in a way. Somebody sat down at their computer, laptop, phone, or blackberry, and typed out all of this. FOR FREE. Had it Beta'd perhaps. The amount of time put into these fics is nothing to be scoffed at. To have all this time, these instrumental pieces of humanity, ripped away because one person found it uncomfortable is a bit unfair, isn't it?

Finally remember that fan fiction is FICTION. Pixels on a screen. There are no actors cast. There are no helpless interns abused. The only people abusing themselves are the writers and the betas, screaming as they figure out how to write a sex scene without 3 consecutive uses of the word "member".

The fanfiction community is one where creators and readers come together to gush about the Fandom, characters, and ships they love the most (Still gotta tie it into Sandman somehow bc it's my current fandom- check out Slow Burn by Arahir; fluffiest sh*t I've read in a while.).

Censorship ain't gonna do shit. Prohibition didn't work. Overturning Roe v. Wade won't work (sorry for that political reference, it's a topic I could rant about later). So banning/censoring something so inane like smutty fanfic, is basically like shooting oneself in the foot. We're still going to find a way to write and read it, no matter what the higher ups do. Heck, a site called "collection that belongs to the common public" might pop up with all the smutty fanfics yall want.

Maybe continue working on...porn censorship instead?

So. Yeah.

[yanderemommabean]

I have an Ao3 and honestly its probably the best site I've used for stuff like this.

- Sunni

I've shared my AO3 a few times on here over the years and no one's really biting on that, I feel it's because interacting with beans on tumblr is a little easier than on that site, but honestly I have no idea

It's a last resort, unless I wanna take the deep dive and enter twitter only for them to pull the same censorship that tumblr has in a year or two. Or cancel me over trivial matters.

I don't know bean, I think I'm just sick and stressed and I just want things to work and not be told I can't create what I want simply because the apple store doesn't like it

*drags hands down my face* I need to eat, it's been days, but literally nothing sounds appetizing and I don't even care. Maybe if I get something on my stomach I'll calm down and quit making people mad with my little tantrums

It ain't y'all, I'm not getting snippy with you beans I'm literally just suddenly overwhelmed and hate the world right now

-Mommabean

[sweetfirebird]

AO3 discourse is so fucking exhausting. I love AO3, I have given money to AO3, it has helped me with distractions when my life was garbage. But it is fucking exhausting to watch over and over again as some people try to explain why AO3 as it was originally set up has some flaws and then for other people to be like BUT WE WERE PERSECUTED AND AO3 SAVED US! And then other people are like, but it was never meant to be set in stone, we are supposed to be able to adapt and change it as our needs evolve, and then other people are like, BUT IT'S AN ARCHIVE! Except that isn't even an argument because archives, like anything else, do not exist or operate in a vacuum, but okay. And then fans of color ask for some protections or even some consideration and AO3 does not respond for years, and whenever those same fans talk about feeling ignored or alone or excluded or unsafe, someone in the comments will be like 'actually we at the OTW are dealing with it, progress is just slow and also we never told anyone about it for some reason.' And then someone else on AO3 will act in bad faith because that is what humans do--this ain't a utopia because those are not real--and everyone will get mad at each other or AO3 and set off another round of discourse. Someone will start screaming about 'antis' and 'fandom cops' only it feels like those terms mean different things to different people, and while slippery slope arguments are good and we should have them, it might also be worth examining what is at the heart of all those varied 'anti' arguments because they don't seem to be going anywhere. Absolutely art for art's sake and freedom of the imagination and all that, but also respect for your fellow human beings??? Art does not rank higher than your humanity?? And yes, if you create or contribute to an archive that wins awards and you claim that fanfiction compares to high literature and it offers feminist or queer liberation than you have to also accept that it will be studied and critiqued as an art form, as a political and cultural statement. You cannot have one without the other. Yes your work is free but it is public and it cultural and it is political, because that is life, and as such, some nerds are going to want to talk about it and discuss trends and tropes and meaning. That's what happens when work matters. But then someone else will be like BUT PURITY CULTURE!!! and/or FANS SHOULD SET THE TONE, NOT THE ARCHIVE!!! and, like, I don't see that happening anywhere because even off AO3 discussions seem to lack nuance or anything resembling nuance to the point where I have to assume some of it is deliberate but by then the screaming has started again.

And anyway. Archives are run by people, and people are flawed and make choices and have biases whether they know it or not. Institutions, even helpful and revolutionary ones, should not be worshipped. Fans DO need to start making racism obviously unwelcome in their fandoms but that means taking long, uncomfortable looks at themselves first. If you say your fanfiction or fanart has personal or cultural value as art enough for you to defend dark themes or whatever, then it will also be judged on those same values.

Also, academic criticism and individual critique of an individual story are different things. Criticism of tropes and trends is not censorship.

[kari-izumi]

History is a flat circle and we've already been there, done that with Fanlib, which is literally the reason @astolat began tossing the idea of AO3 out there (contrary to popular belief, Strikethrough was not the motivator for AO3's creation, although the timing of that event a few weeks after this idea was first put out didn't hurt)

I get that people need to hustle these days and no, it's not fair that artists can get commissions with fanart and writers for all practical purposes can't. But until one owns the IP, this relative peace can be snapped away and that will eventually include the artists too. Anne Rice's name is still treated like [villain from a TERF author's terrible series redacted]'s for good reason. She was the most vicious but not the only one--Lucas went after author's, as did Fox Studios, Paramount...all of them.

More important, I don't want to see anyone get financially ruined if and when Tumblr throws them under the bus. Because a site that can't be assed to unfuck it's broken ass code, get rid of porn bots and whose censorship filter can't tell the difference between female presenting nipples and the hill from the default Windows XP wallpaper sure as fuck ain't going to bat for a teenage user who just wanted to raise a few bucks to help with bills.

Be smart, folks.

some very important info re: paid accounts~

I am not a lawyer, but I can decently interpret legalese and, being as I also suffer from tl;dr syndrome and assume others may as well, I took one for the team and went through the updated TOS for the post+ accounts and highlighted (what I understand to be) the most pertinent information, which ultimately comes down to this:

You cannot monetize copyrighted works (aka charge and earn money from fanfic, fanworks, etc) and if you do decide to put your fanworks behind a paywall via Tumblr, when you are inevitably sued, Tumblr will not protect you and will not defend you and you alone, personally, will be responsible for whatever monetary damages said lawsuit results in.

If anyone is a lawyer and knows I've gotten any of this wrong, please do not hesitate to correct me/this post.

Screenshots taken from Tumblr's TOS (updated 7-21-21), Stripe's Account Agreement, and the post+ FAQs.

1. Your paid account will not be hosted by tumblr; it is routed through a 3rd party.

2. By signing up for a paid account, you're entering into an agreement with Stripe, so in addition to Tumblr's TOS, you are also bound to Stripe's TOS.

3. Stripe, like Tumblr, will not defend you or protect you against any lawsuits.

4. Furthermore, you may end up owing Stripe money (indemnify = compensate)

5. Tumblr's TOS specifically states that you can't put any content on your post+ account that violates any laws, including laws that protect intellectual property rights of others. This is super important, because Tumblr's post+ FAQ also states that you can post anything that you would regularly post on tumblr, which I'm sure many will take to mean that gifsets, fanworks, etc are fair game, since all of that stuff can be posted on tumblr now. However, the difference is, you're not making money from the fanworks you're posting or reblogging now. Once money enters the equation, the game changes.

Tumblr is making it seem like any and all content goes for post+ accounts, knowing 90% of this site is fanworks. This is not true and you'll be opening yourself up for lawsuits if you charge for fanworks.

6. Tumblr further disclaims any and all liability in any legal issues.

tl;dr: Please do not make a post+ account, bc you will be opening yourself to lawsuits and if that happens, Tumblr's response will be not our problem, you agreed to all the terms which said you couldn't do that, sorry not sorry. Please protect yourself.

[softpaladin]

ao3 donator bitches will be like "just block tags you don't want to see!", meanwhile so many authors either don't believe in tagging things or just straightup don't know how to tag properly or what needs to be tagged

and in the case of racist fic, if the author cared they'd delete the fic and apologize, or if they don't care they'd just go "wahhh i'm being oppressed, art can't be racist, you're not allowed to even criticize me because criticism is the same as censorship"

and like. tagging something in a work indicates that that work has that thing in it, it doesn't say anything about how that thing is being written about

if you're depicting something in a shitty way, if you're writing poorly, tags are just a bandaid on the diseased work you've got there, and bandaids ain't antibiotics, you need to fix the work itself or scrap it

there could be a fic tagged with graphic violence that's compelling and well written, and another fic tagged with graphic violence that's written like garbage with bad characters and bad pacing. if someone likes the first and dislikes the second, it's because the second one is bad, not because it has violence in it

[giraffeseatingcake]

Does tumblr think tumblr is the only website without TOS on sexual language? Twitch, Reddit, Youtube. I mean, 4chan too. Snapchat, AO3. Pinterest maybe? Pretty much any other social media/file hosting/streaming/blogging platform that isn't Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It's just them guys. The Four Horsemen of Shit Media Platforms. Let's not assume shitty algorithmic censorship is, or ever should be the norm. It ain't.

Hey, hey

Are you under the impression that I'm not allowed to say the word "tits" on Twitch?

I've said far worse.

I'll say booba when the word booba feels right