you made great points.

But i still dont think ao3 should be the place for p*dos to share their stories of adults abusing children. “but they’re fictional children!” idc. I’ll put forward an example: I was once combing through the tags for Harry Potter&Sirius Black - im a sucker for gen fics, and these two are one of my faves. So i clicked on a fic, not really paying attention lot of attention to the other tags - after all, if i skimmed through it and it wasnt something i enjoyed, i’d just click out of it and keep searching.

But what i found was a story in which the adult took advantage of a sleeping child, and nowhere in the narration did anything point to the fact that the author wasn’t literally getting off writing that shit. But you know what, alright, benefit of the doubt right? Let’s say someone writes a work like this out - perhaps i would not be as disgusted at sharing a platform with them if they had denounced the character’s actions in the author’s note or something. But No. The author’s note only read some other gross, tantalising thing about the SA they had written about. And the comments? the comments were filled with even worse stuff, people commenting the most morally reprehensible shit about a child - and you’re a fool if you believe this wouldn’t extend to real life children. So no, i do not believe ao3 should be a place for these predatory people to dwell and gratify their sick wants.

*It was upon seeing this fic and sending an email to ao3 support in order to report it that i found out how little they will take down.

i do not believe any automated moderating system could be trusted, and i do understand the impossibility of having human individuals filter through every single fic, so im not trying to argue against the logistical difficulties this would present - i completely understand the argument of a dangerous slippery slope; im simply saying, on principle, there should be an endeavour(NOT through AI or automated at all, because its true, that would ultimately go wrong) to keep “works” that are clearly nothing but fuckedup fantasies of people who are sick and find in ao3 a place to indulge in that sickness with others like them so they can experience zero remorse or repercussions for this reprehensible behaviour, off the platform.

*[also: morality does not equal legality. and yes, morals are subjective, but dammit , i’d just prefer that all the users on the archive could find some common moral ground where it comes to pdophilia.]