I'm pretty sure the most recent wave of anger against AO3 (maybe including that post about reporting them to the FBI) is, uh, more justified and specific than usual. From what I've heard, they're refusing to put any restrictions on RPF about real, underage people (teenage Minecraft streamers?) being raped. Still not within the legal definition of child porn, but definitely worse than either sexual RPF of adult celebrities or stories in which bad things happen to fictional children.
I see. I still believe that the stance I took on that post - “is this legal, and will reporting to the FBI do anything” (yes, and no, respectively) - still holds up.
And that generally seems to be AO3′s very hard line stance, made way back when fanfic went through a lot of bullshit for bigoted reasons: where does the actual law fall on the matter?
No actual real life minors are being harmed, just fictional representations of real people going through fictional events, and that’s all the USA law cares about.
Now, this doesn’t mean it’s good. I’m not saying that. But AO3 was founded by using *strictly* the law to keep itself safe from a lot of bullshit that has plagued the history of fandom (authors trying to sue people who wrote fanfic, sites screwing over writers, etc). If it wavers on that for anything, will that open the door to worst?
It sounds like a real slippery slope bullshit argument, except unfortunately we’ve seen it happen. We’ve also seen people pull all sorts of bullshit in fandom - we live in a doxxing era. A “harass the creative team and all employees” era. A This Bullshit in 2020 Alone era.
I highly doubt that anyone on the AO3 team actually likes this kind of content, or wants to defend That, Specifically. But I can see why the AO3 team is sticking to this like they are.
I dunno! It sucks, I would not care for that content myself regardless of the age of the writer (which I haven’t seen brought up, and could explain some things like Why), and I do not envy being the AO3 team as they weather through this.
I also hope that no one has, like, shoved this into the attention of those streamers, because that would suck even more. That’s the main thing I care about, tbh. Unfortunately, if this is blowing up, I suspect that it’s come up, especially if their main fanbase is also teens hoping to stand out and not really think in how they do it. I dunno.
This may mean the RPF fandom making it more known that “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” for newer fans joining it, but allegedly, that was already a “common sense” sort of rule? I’m not sure about that, but I’m not into RPF in any fashion, so really all I can do is weak guesswork. I’m spitballing and bullshitting here.
