It Should Not Be The Responsibility Of The Archive - Tumblr Posts

Conservative groups - including people who label themselves as liberal or progressive or whatever else they think they are, even as they whole heartedly participate in efforts to censor and control the kind of things that other consenting adults can read/view/participate in/etc - will always try to find ways to make their demands seem reasonable every step of the way. Terminology matters, because accurate communication of the ideas that are actually being conveyed matters. In this case, the important pieces are:

CSAM explicitly involves harm to a child. By definition, it cannot be created without harming a child. By the time someone reaches the point of sharing it, they have already caused harm to a child. That's why it is already not allowed on ao3.

Ao3 hosts fictional content, which by definition is not causing harm in its creation - because it is fiction. Whether or not you personally agree with actions depicted in a fictional story does not make the story less fictional. Whether or not reading that story would make you personally uncomfortable does not make the story itself less fictional. The content does not cause harm just in the process of its creation. Comparing fictional depictions of underage characters engaging in sexual activity to actual CSAM is like comparing fictional depictions of violence or death to someone uploading a video of themselves stabbing another person to ao3. These are wildly different things.

Ao3 is also not making money off the content it hosts, and nor are its authors. It is an archive that survives primarily on donations, volunteer work, and the free work put in by a wildly diverse range of authors whose only barriers to uploading their work is access to an internet connection and an email to sign up to ao3 with. Therefore, arguments against any particular fictional content hosted on ao3 are claims that something which is harmless in its creation causes harm when it is accessible to other people - not forced on other people, just accessible. To do that, they have to focus on the idea that people can't properly curate their own reading experiences on ao3, and that it is the responsibility of ao3, an archive, to ensure that no one ever even accidentally has to see anything they might personally find icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant.

The issue with that last option is that once you accept that responsibility, the options for what might be icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant to any given rando from the internet start to get really broad.

I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CP (child pornography) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:

If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CP... it's not actually CP they want to eradicate...

I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.

First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CP and they conflate the actual threat of CP in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CP...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CP content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CP (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).

Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough p*rn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.

And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.

And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?

It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.