I don't think it's productive to assume people are operating in bad faith. Their stated goals are reasonable, in my opinion--expanding the TOS to define what actually constitutes harassment, for one thing. The current policy is a little vague on what is actually considered 'bullying' and 'personal attacks'.
Yes, antis exist, but if we assume that anyone who wants any kind of change to AO3 policy is actually trying to bring about censorship in secret, then meaningful dialogue is impossible.
I'm assuming nothing. I read the website for this little movement. It makes clear what this is really about. I encourage you to read it as well and see what their main complaints and demands are about. It's not about someone being harassed.
https://archive.ph/t6NXp (original link https://www.tumblr.com/end-otw-racism/716978822501875712/fandom-against-racism-a-manifesto)
Alright, read the post through as well as several of the posts linked by it.
I'll quote the manifesto's main demands here:
" * Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims. * A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes. "
The first one in my view is completely reasonable. The second suggests that yes, the movement is being disingenuous if they say they're not in favor of at least some censorship, because it implies that any inclusion of bigotry that isn't 'accidental' (which again depends upon the subjective judgment of AO3 volunteers) must be considered abusive/harassment by default. And several of the linked sources clearly have an anti slant--this one specifically accuses AO3 of hosting "child porn": https://www.tumblr.com/nerdlingwrites/624303276296388609/seriously-im-going-to-delete-this-post-just-so .
So I concede that if this post is representative of the movement then it is probably on the whole in favor of censorship, which is obviously unfortunate.
And yet the goals of people in a movement can vary considerably. The EndOTWRacism fic collection contains many fics that have 'problematic' themes. There's no reason to assume that when pretty_weird_ideas says, "We're not asking them for a unilateral ban of words", that it isn't true in their case. We can respectfully engage with people who present positions that aren't asking for content restrictions on the archive without throwing them in with everyone else. Engage with what is said and not what isn't, in my opinion.
Personally, I'm all against harassment as well, which I said before in this thread. I especially think the organization needs to take a stance against organized harassment of authors and volunteers/employees of OTW. However, the repeated failure to point to actual cases of racist harassment should also say something about how prevalent it actually is. Meanwhile, people on this very post are arguably harassing others for disagreeing with this very movement.
I understand not wanting to lump people together, but I would like to point out that when people use hashtags directly referring back to a post like that, or when they organize directly with people connected to posts making specific demands, I will assume they share the same agenda. So the censorship demands aren't tangential here. They're a core part of the movement going on and any claims otherwise are objectively false.
Comment on Resignation of OTW Director
acidbirth Tue 23 May 2023 05:28AM UTC
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MalcontentCatboy Tue 23 May 2023 05:35AM UTC
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acidbirth Tue 23 May 2023 06:11AM UTC
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MalcontentCatboy Tue 23 May 2023 06:17AM UTC
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