Dude, they’re literally reporting it for the tons of child porn written on site that they actively allow there.

thebibliosphere:

trinket-the-bear:

thebibliosphere:

Allow me to start of by saying, I in no way support, anyone or anything that promotes or endorses that kind of content. It makes me physically ill even knowing it exists.

There are however entire screeds in the Ao3 terms and services talking about what is and is not allowed on Ao3, and child porn is pretty high up the list of what Ao3 does not deem as okay.

I don’t doubt that there have been genuine incidences of inappropriate content, because this is the Internet and people are awful sometimes, but I also know that Ao3 does deal with people when they breach their terms of services, and they are swift about it. What they do not do is throw the baby out with the bathwater which is what this is, and I’m extremely wary of anyone who is in favor of mass censorship like a lot of “antis” are clamoring for.

I was your age during the fandom purges that went on in LiveJournal and Fanficnet, and this exactly is how we lost our fandom spaces before. It’s how we lost thousands and thousands of stories and writers and safe spaces that were in no way promoting that kind of content, but a select few people decided we were writing about “immoral things”, and do you know what those “immoral things” were? Being gay. Being anything other than what they deemed “normal”. Anything at all to do with sex was also removed regardless of context, anything tagged as “rape” was removed too, including forums set up to support survivors of assault. We were deleted without discrimination, or without proof of the validity of their claims.

And they used the same argument that they’re using now. They called it child porn and demanded that sites cater to children, even if those sites were never intended for a child audience.

They forced any and all LGBT+ content regardless of actual explicit material, onto NSFW sites intended for adults and kink, because that’s all we were to them. They made it less safe to talk to people and to spread awareness about certain issues, and to group together with people like ourselves.

So you’ll have to pardon me for being tired that this kind of thing is happening again because by and large for the most part, this is a puritanical witch hunt spun to sound like moral concern when really it’s another attempt at censorship because people don’t like something so they do the easy thing and cry “pedophile!” because they know it’s a real easy way to discredit someone and ruin their life. They know it, and they do it anyway, regardless of the harm it causes, or how it invalidates those of us who are actual victims of predatory adults. And yes, I speak from personal experience. And no I’d rather not to have to talk about it in public again.

I’ve been a minor in fandom. I know not everyone is as careful as me
about tagging my work and making sure no one under the age of 18 can
accidentally stumble onto my adult works.

I also know not all adults are good adults and you deserve to be protected from them. But I also know people making false claims to the FBI is not going to end well. For anyone.

And if it turns out Ao3 is actually investigated and found to be harboring such content, you can tell me I was wrong and I’ll gladly watch it burn. But I’ve seen this shitshow before, I know the tactics used, and I know it just opens up a whole other can of problems that we’re already seeing the effects of online and off and they are not easy to fight.

If any of this makes you uncomfortable with following me, you don’t have to reply, you can just block me and leave, as you should any other adult who makes you feel uncomfortable. You are in charge of your own online safety, and curating what you see on your dash. Take care of yourself and stay safe.

Adding onto what Joy said, because I have a very bad feeling about what the original asker thinks “child porn” is, and as I know a good deal about this from research back during Strikethrough:

There’s a stark difference between “child porn” in the legal sense and “written stories about an underage character having sex and/or being a victim of sexual trauma”.

Legally, and also from the moral standpoint that the ask attempts to invoke, child porn is visual live pornography of actual minors, ie photographs or videos of actual human children in sexual positions, which by its nature requires at least one actual human child to have been put in a sexual position, and therefore traumatized. Which is why child porn is so horrifying- because a child was literally deeply harmed to produce it. Writing about minors in sexual situations does not require any actual living underage human being to do anything at all, let alone be forced into sexual situations they aren’t ready for.

AO3 DOES NOT allow child porn, and if you find any, you should report it for TOS violations. AO3 DOES allow fanworks featuring various underage situations, regardless of whether these situations would be morally okay in real life. Because writing is NOT REAL LIFE, and with appropriate warning labels, written stories don’t hurt anyone.

Thank you for adding this on, I appreciate it. I don’t have the mental or emotional energy to truly go in depth with this like I have in the past. I’m just so tired and also triggered by a lot of this. But I try to still talk about it because I feel it’s important to do so.