Controversial opinion: AO3 *is* and always *has* been a Safe Space. That was always the intention. Antis just just don’t like that *they* are what it’s a safe space from, and don’t believe that fanfiction authors – particularly authors who write controversial subject matter and have their individual messy, nuanced, *personal* reasons that they don’t have to justify to anyone – count as a marginalized, persecuted community worthy of their *own* safe space. They have no concept of The Dark Times.

shipping-isnt-morality:

I have yet to see a single goddamn person who was active in fandom 10 years ago jump on this “AO3 is evil and should ban some content” train. (I’m sure some exist – probably the same people who felt Strikethrough was a good thing and waxed morally superior about how their communities didn’t get hit with it, so clearly it was just people being mad that their Gross Pedophile Porn was deleted.)

“ban child porn”? cool – they started in 2006/7 with deleting all of the hogwarts-era explicit fic, want to start there? maybe enlist the help of an anti-pedophilia activist organization? don’t worry about whether they have conservative Christian rhetoric on their site, I’m sure they won’t go after gay content either. let’s just hire some more moderators – no way that different people could ever make different judgement calls about a piece of fiction.

this has all. happened. before. AO3’s creed didn’t come from nothing, created by people who were too naive to know what fandom would create given freedom or without half a million other ideas being tried first. we had sites which moderated all entries (a nightmare which ended up being cliquey and highly dependent on moderator tastes), sites that only allowed Unproblematic pairings (which inevitably fell into vicious ship wars with rival sites), sites which banned NSFW content altogether (and ESPECIALLY none of that Gay Shit, what will we tell the children). We had sites get bought out by investors or pressured by advertisers, sites run by for-profit companies, sites get shut down CONSTANTLY by media companies which didn’t like those Dirty Things that fans were doing with their precious IP.

AO3’s a safe space for creators because there never was one before. We had safe spaces for readers, and they fell to goddamn pieces. And sure enough, readers used tools to make their own spaces. AO3 took off because its model works, and the people who want to change it don’t know why the alternatives didn’t.