Why AO3 needs to be accountable for reducing fandom racism in its internal culture and the archive

[beatrice_otter]

You've probably seen end-otw-racism in the last few days, trying to get people to support their efforts to get the AO3 to actually DO something about the racism problem that AO3 has admitted that it has. Here's their call to action post, with a brief summary of the problems and what they want people to do about it.

Basically, there have been problems with racism at AO3 since the beginning, and they did acknowledge the problems in 2020 and promise to fix them, and haven't actually ... done most of the things they said they would. They have started to implement blocking and muting, which is good, because those are vital tools for fans of color to protect themselves from racist harassment, but they haven't updated their TOS or changed their Abuse policies or hired the diversity consultant they said they were going to.

And that's a big problem. Among other things the original head of the Abuse team--the one who set it up and developed the policies and procedures still in use today!--was a noted racist who has since been banned from at least one convention and at least one fanwork exchange for making a lot of fans of color uncomfortable. This is not the only problem with a white supremacist culture in the organization, but it is emblematic of the larger issues with the organization's culture that have not been addressed. (That link is from 2020, but nothing substantial has changed since then, alas.) If you think that the AO3 is fine, and people are overstating things, I really encourage you to go read that post and the links in it. And then go read these tweet threads about what the state of things at AO3 is now. Maybe also go read Stitch's excellent essays on racism in fandom (and remember that people have tried to destroy her life--get her fired and get her on terrorist watch lists--for writing them).

What sorts of things does end-otw-racism want? Basic stuff that AO3 should already be doing. For example, people should not be allowed to harass people through AO3 using trolling fanworks, harassing tags, and comments. Yet when people use these parts of AO3 infrastructure to harass people of color and create a hostile environment for them, AO3 Abuse says there's nothing they can do and it doesn't count as harassment under the site's TOS.

end-otw-racism is not calling for censorship. They are calling for the OTW to realize that AO3 currently has a Nazi Bar Problem. You cannot have a safe that is safe for both nazis and people of color. If you try, the nazis will harass and drive out the people of color. Tolerance is not a moral principle, it is a peace treaty; if one side does not abide by it, asking the other side to abide by it is asking them to lay down and accept their abuse. And free speech is incredibly important, but it has limits; and those limits are where you are using speech to harass people and incite violence, which some people are using AO3 to do!

I hope that you will all support end-otw-racism in calling for the AO3 to fulfill its promises and address the issues in question, and I hope the AO3 will listen.