hey yall here are some handy things to read on fandom censorship, in case you’d actually like to learn about the history of fandom:
Fanlore page on censorship
Fanlore timeline on fandom purges
The FFnet NC-17 purges (2002 and 2012)
The Three Laws of Fandom discussion, 2016
ao3 and censorship discussion, 2016
Strikethrough (censorship on LJ), 2007
Media imperialism, fan resistance and state censorship: BBC Sherlock Slash fandom in China (academic paper)
Porn bans, purges, and rebirths: the biopolitics of platform death in queer fandoms (academic paper)
The online free speech debate is raging in fan fiction, too (the verge, 2018)
Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet (Vox, 2023)
and just a bit more:
The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism, Freedom House 2018
You don’t think they’re gonna come for your side of fandom until they do. You think you’re exempt or what you do “isn’t that dark” until someone else claims it is.
Being anti censorship means that even if you don’t read it, even if you think it’s deplorable, or even if you think people who read it are deplorable - you still stand up and fight for them. You still allow them to have a platform for the fictional works they produce.
Being profic doesn’t mean “problematic” it means you’re for fiction, you stand up for it, you fight for it. Don’t like, don’t read - create your safe space, but you have to fight for everyone’s safe space.
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