bendingsignpost:

ltleflrt:

salt-of-the-ao3:

the-real-seebs:

voidsexual:

bottomsona:

donation worthy website: wikipedia

NOT donation worthy website: ao3

what op isn’t saying: a site that gives young writers a platform to make their work more accessible is bad

what op is saying: don’t give your money to a site that actively turns a blind eye to child pornography

This seems like a good time to remind people that AO3 grew directly out of a previous moral panic similar to the one on tumblr, complete with people calling things “child pornography” when they weren’t. AO3 does not, in fact, turn a blind eye to child pornography. AO3 does allow writing which involves uncomfortable themes, including child abuse. That’s not child pornography. But there’s female writers, and queer writers, and queer content, and that makes people uncomfortable, so they go around stretching definitions so they can claim that a non-pornographic textual description of sex is “pornography”, and 18-year-old characters are “children”, and ignore all the other distinctions.

People on the Internet have been using accusations of pedophilia and child pornography to silence things they dislike for decades. It’s not new, and its primary effect is to allow actual abusers to escape detection, because the vocal critics are flooding law enforcement inboxes with spurious reports.

The spurious reports are, invariably, directed at marginalized and vulnerable people. People it’s safe to attack. AO3 exists precisely because that consistent pattern of targeting vulnerable people on trumped-up charges has been causing our communities a great deal of pain for longer than most of the current crop of attackers have been alive. Please continue to support AO3.

If you are deeply concerned for the wellbeing of the people attacking AO3, consider that you may be saving them a lifetime of bitter remorse over what they destroyed, when they grow up enough to realize that trying to wreck the lives and work of vulnerable people so you can feel powerful isn’t actually protecting anyone.

Omg. OPs. Seriously. Do you know what “child pornography” even IS. I politely invite you to go read the good wikipedia article on it, since this is apparently a website that you trust.

Don’t go throwing that kind of terms and extremely serious around while meaning something completely different entirely.

@the-real-seebs thanks for that good commentary

Already made my hefty donation to AO3, and will continue to support them in the future.  I’m very thankful for a site dedicated to protecting writers from the uneducated purity police.

^^^^^