Why AO3 Sucks (Part 3)

A recent development in the Archive of Our Own censorship saga gave me a good laugh so even though I said I probably wouldn't post again, I couldn't resist making another post that once again reveals the AO3 mods for the biased idiots they are—and it's not hard at all to accomplish that as you'll see!

I recently posted the following fic to AO3:

You are Tony Stark. You've heard so much about this fanfiction website called Archive of Our Own and decide to get in line for an account because, despite this being the 21st century, AO3 still requires you to wait a week just for the “privilege” of having an account with them. When the email finally comes to get your account, you eagerly sign up for it. You pick a cool username and then post a couple fanfics which you worked hard on for weeks, editing them to perfection.

A few days later, you check your email. You notice an email from policy-abuse@archiveofourown.org and wonder what it could be about. The message states that all your AO3 posts were deleted and you've been banned for “non-fictional comments” you made about this multimedia series called Iron Man and for “spamming” your Tumblr account and that said actions violate AO3's Terms of Service.

You frantically read over the TOS to find these alleged provisions and find nothing even alluding to it. You reply to the email, insisting there must have been a mistake. The response you receive ignores all your valid arguments and simply continues insisting that you violated their TOS. Your posts are never restored and your account stays banned. Needless to say, you decide to abandon AO3 and find another place to post your fics.

I was not in the least bit surprised when they deleted this and all the other fics posted on the kwerty1 account:

I was simply waiting for them to delete these fics as I knew it was only a matter of time. It goes without saying that posts that mock the mods are one of the things they'll delete from their site even though it doesn't violate their TOS to post such content. On previous posts on this blog, I showed how openly hostile AO3 is to “nonfictional comments” (AKA, true statements) even when confined to author notes. So by deleting these fics, they're basically confirming that they do, in fact, delete fics that don't violate the TOS since otherwise, these fics would qualify as fiction and be allowed, wouldn't they?

They also say something about creating a new account to evade a suspension despite the fact that I was not banned under any account at the time that I posted any of these fics as the bans they place upon people for (non)violations of their TOS are merely temporary (until you piss off a mod enough for them to permanently ban you, of course. I'm honestly only amazed I haven't already reached that point yet simply because I post the sort of stuff they clearly hate...).

Since their attempted justification for deleting this set of fics is that they're “non-fanworks” even though they're just as much fanworks (if not more) as any of the plethora of AU fics hosted on the site, of course, I decided to start dutifully reporting fics that clearly are non-fanworks because they're tagged as such (with tags like “original work” and “no fandom”). I quickly found that, despite being a site that's apparently so committed to cleansing itself of all the content that they in their sole and biased discretion consider abusive, you are limited to only make a measly five(!) reports per day. There are far more than 5 non-fanwork posts made every day on top of all the other forms of policy-violating content that maybe aren't quite as easy to find. Plus, they even warn you to not go looking for things to report because, you know, they clearly don't want you to point out how terrible they are at doing their one job...

I got the following email from AO3 after reporting several posts that didn't carry a tag for any fandom and instead only had the “original work” tag:

A few parts in particular stand out:

Our Terms of Service FAQ states: "Original works that are not based on a specific media source (canon) may also count as fanworks so long as they are fannish in nature...

Non-ephemeral original works created within a fannish context are transformative fiction and thus allowed on the Archive. We take a very broad view of what "fannish context" means. A work does not need to be based on a particular fandom to be considered a fanwork; original fannish works may use fannish tropes or be created for a fannish audience. Works such as these often carry the "Original Work" or "No Fandom" fandom tags. In general, our policy regarding such works is to defer to the creator: unless an original work violates some other policy, it will be allowed to stay on the Archive.

So they apparently have an FAQ where they hide a bunch of exceptions to their TOS even though nowhere in their TOS does it state this—you're just supposed to somehow know about all the TOS addenda hidden there. FAQ doesn't mean “all the fine print goes here” but they clearly think it does. This is all a load of deceptive BS but AO3 is certainly no stranger to peddling that.

They even made up a word (“fannish”) to defend their selective censorship. What the hell does fannish even mean? Their nearly nonsensical explanation helpfully includes the word it attempts to define (thus ensuring maximum confusion) but my educated guess is that it basically means “related to fan/fandoms.” However, if so, every fictional story with characters and a plot could be considered “fannish” because of merely resembling the format of the typical fandom/fanfic. So as usual, it's just BS lingo that the mods are using to try to make it appear that they're not biased as hell when it comes to deleting AO3 posts. Nothing new here.

Original works that are not based on a specific media source (canon) may also count as fanworks so long as they are fannish in nature. […] Examples include such things as anthropomorfic, original fiction that is produced as part of a fandom challenge, exchange, or charity event, and genres such as Original Slash, Original BL, and Regency romances produced in Jane Austen fandom.

Not like any more evidence was needed that AO3 is a yaoi (boy on boy lovin') fansite first and foremost and that the mods are all heavily biased against anything that dares to poke fun at it (just a few minutes of browsing AO3 without any filters should make that very obvious) no matter how nonsensical those types of fics frequently are or how often they fly in the face of everything established in the average fandom's canon, but here ya go! Didn't realise “slash” counted as a genre either! Last I checked, genres are things such as romance (and “slash” would only count as a subgenre of that at most) but I guess when you have a bias in favor of something, you put it on pedestal like that, eh? Notice how no exception was carved out for hetero shipfics, gen fics or any number of highly worthy fic types because the mods don't care about those, of course! If you post that type of stuff to AO3, you do so at your own risk because they won't bother to defend your right to free speech and expression for those worthless pieces of garbage...

I honestly pity AO3's mods for having biases so entrenched that they will go to such great lengths to defend them. I really wonder what the “qualifications” are for becoming an AO3 mod. The ability to make up BS to support your prejudices with a straight face?

Please, for the love of God, stop using a site that censors as heavily and unrepentantly as AO3! Transparent censorship is one thing (ie, consistently deleting things that explicitly violate a clearly-stated and fair set of rules/TOS) but sites like AO3 that do the opposite of that (pretending to be super-inclusive while simultaneously censoring their site in incredibly deceptive and uneven ways) are the absolute worst. Luckily, I don't live in China, and I refuse to let a site dictate what things I can view or post as if I did live there. Even if you personally don't care about the types of fics AO3 is deleting en masse, do it simply because censorship in any form is abhorrent and should be nipped in the bud ASAP before it's allowed to get even more out of hand. Remember, it doesn't fail to be censorship just because the things that were deleted weren't things you cared about anyway. One day it's these types of fics, tomorrow it's the type of fics you like. Heed the warning signs and look for greener pastures elsewhere now. 

Quotev seems like the best replacement for AO3 although fanfiction.net is still acceptable (it's over two decades old, give it a break. It has aged remarkably well considering its age and the ads can all be blocked with an ad blocker). Wattpad and blog/social media sites like Tumblr are the last sites I would recommend moving to since some of them require signing up for an account to browse and Wattpad doesn't let you browse at all, making it a disorganized mess. I'd search Google for fanfics sooner than Wattpad or Tumblr, personally.