fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5972 ]

[ SECRET POST #5972 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5972 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Figment 2: Creed Valley]

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[Coffeezilla]

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[xxxHolic/Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle/CLAMP]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 44 secrets from Secret Submission Post #854.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Apart from the usual "AO3 is bad" stuff that goes around, now there's a movement to end racism on AO3. I feel like their goals are too lofty but I could be way off base. I don't think people should be writing thinly disguised fic about the killing of real people, but I also don't think people should be writing fic about eight year olds fucking. I just don't know how the archive would be able to police one but not the other.

I kind of expected someone on here to be talking about it, but I haven't seen a thread, so here's one.
https://www.tumblr.com/end-otw-racism

no
leave ao3 out of your crazy morality police.

Exactly this.

Late to the party, but co-signed.

I genuinely don't care. All the examples they show are trolls. Just report them, ignore them, and move on. This isn't some organized movement that has real life effects on people.

Or, don't use AO3.

I'd like to know if those behind this have done similar work in the communities where they live. I feel like that would be a more worthwhile use of their time.

The whole thing gives me weird vibes, just something off about the post.

I don't think people who make manifestos like that really understand how websites like A03 work. I mean they talk a lot but what do they actually want A03 or OTW to do? There seems to be a lot of yelling at OTW/AO3 lately without any reasonable action and a whole lot of entitlement. And before anyone gets upset, of course harassment and racism is bad, but it's the internet and I'm not sure what kind of realistic policies they want without also going against the kind of freedom fandom has generally had. It actually reminds me a bit of the outcry LJ of pedophilia in fandom and how people should be doing something to about it.

Idk my reading comprehension isn't always the best so maybe I'm misreading things. Feel free to educate me.

From here it just looks like busybodies throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. "This magic word didn't get them to jump and censor? Let's try a different one ..."

Although I guess it's a definite step forward if they tried to scare everyone with imaginary child-harm and equally imaginary sexual exploitation of same (in fiction) and are being forced to look for some other hot-button to push. That's new.

Why don't they go and make their own antiracist website for fandom?

AO3 is full of works that offend someone somewhere for whatever reason (underage character, kink they find terrible, noncon, etc.) I agree that it really sucks to stumble upon racist content, but not sure how that's actually in a different offensively triggering category than rapey content or daddyfucking; the story itself may be demonstrating that racism is actually bad, or raceplay could be a kink? (Not one of mine, fyi. I'm vanilla as hell. But I can't imagine that racist fic is super popular in fandom?)

So I don't know who would decide what qualifies as unacceptable content here.

I do know that some antiracist fans insinuate that whitecock ships are racist for existing when a black character who's right there is left out (for example, Steve/Tony when Rhodey and Tony are closer in canon.) But policing what ships people get off to is stupid.

Mmmm. Wanting a content policy on a site that's guiding principle is No Content Policy is dicy.

That said, someone talking about the manifesto cited an instance of someone organising a harassment campaign on a different platform, and saying that the Support and Abuse Committee currently doesn't take things like that into account, when maybe it should.

I'm... dubious about adding content policies. Better harassment protection seems like a reasonable thing to ask for, though.

Maybe it should, but how do you confirm that a person doesn't make a username on any social media app pretending to be some other AO3 user to start nonsense or troll? Even if they are legit bad actors, I don't think the AO3 has the resources to investigate those kinds of things, like Substack (just a random publishing site example) likely isn't going to investigate some jackassery on Twitter or whatever in order to ban people either.

That said, the only racist things I've seen in fandom have shown up in callout posts; I've never accidentally run across racist fanworks in the wild in the course of my fic consumption, so I'm not sure how big a problem it is and why just calling it out isn't adequate.

Mmm. It's complicated.

Nope.

I don't know how they'd get racist shitheads to voluntarily tag their work as racist. Presumably the people writing racist stuff because they get off on it/are dealing with trauma/are writing from the POV of a racist character/whatever are already tagging their stuff so people can find/avoid it. All that's left is ignorance and malice, and I don't think volunteers on a fanfic archive should have to educate the ignorant and combat the malicious in addition to making sure users tag their shit correctly, and users stop trying to fundraise on a nonprofit site.

What happens to existing posted work that deals with racism/is racist? Auto "choose not to warn" added? Auto "this work was posted before the creation of the Racism warning, read at own risk" added?

Do all the volunteers who have to deal with contacting the authors of improperly (un)tagged fics get diversity and inclusion training so they can recognize (US based, most likely) racism?

The archive probably can't ban racist content outright because a) that opens the barn door to other bans of work that's not illegal under US law and b) they just don't have enough trained volunteers to go around as is. The archive doesn't have the money to hire paid moderators or whatever, either.

Idk, I sympathize with fans who don't want to see their hobby contaminated with racist bullshit and don't want to deal with bullying and attacks by racists. And I could see adding a racism archive warning, for what good it might do.

I'm glad users can block each other now (I think? I only use my account to read and comment and have never blocked anyone or been blocked that I know of.)

But I don't think Ao3 should be banning people based on what they get up to outside Ao3; for one thing I could see impersonators trying to get users banned for stupid fandom reasons like shipwars, or accusations of racism that are actually "we disagree on what RL race this green-skinned fantasy humanoid would be in a human AU," or whatever, and I'm sure there'd be plenty of actual mistaken identity shit, too. I don't have any social media accounts but if someone accused me of being racist based on what someone using my Ao3 handle on, idk, twitter or somewhere was saying, how would rando Ao3 volunteer know I wasn't the person spewing racist bile everywhere?

Idk I don't have any answers, but I support Ao3 allowing every fanwork that's legal under US law, despite that meaning there's tons of fic on the site you couldn't pay me to read, and I also support fans who don't want to deal with racism in their fun fandom hobby. I don't think Ao3 can or should start banning users based on their behavior on other sites, either. Idk.

First: "AO3 supports pedophilia!"

A few years later: "Well shoot, this isn't working, AO3's still here. Uhhh... *types something racist into AO3's search engine* *gets results* AO3 is racist!"

Yeah, I think it's very difficult to police content that way, but it's not so hard to police abuse on AO3 itself. The example they're talking about in the post (Dr Pande) was someone who was viciously harassed on other platforms for writing about racism in fandom, and people also put things like "Rukmini Pande would hate this fic" on their fic. But AO3 didn't look at those tags in the context of wider harassment, they considered them in isolation, so nobody was made to remove the tags directly made to bully one person because the further nasty behaviour was hosted elsewhere. I think that's a pretty clear example of AO3 policy that enabled racist bullying and would be easy to see in other forms of bullying.

(Also, I am very dubious about anything that Stitch proposes ever, because she's a horrendous bully herself.)

It's sort of racist in a way that the world is racist. So you can get awful behavior and bulling in there too.

I think AO3 made a big step in introducing blocking and muting functions. What can they do more? I don't know

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5972 ]

AO3 is racist?

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