hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity
You know it legally is a charity, right?
If x charity aims for £10, but gets £15, would you expect then to give back the extra five or give it then to another charity? No. Any extra costs go into the “rainy day” fund; sometimes servers crash or break, sometimes false reports are made that require the legal team, sometimes you need to hire coders or what not to implement new features or fix bugs or deal with broken code …
The money they aimed for is the bare minimum, which goes towards things like basic server costs and domain names and legal advice and so forth, but they don’t just “pocket” the rest (as people claim). It’s not a business. It has no advertisements. It needs some “rainy day” cash to function.
You can’t ask a charity to give money to another charity.
They don’t “pocket” excess money. They have a
publicly accessible budget – waaaay more info than most charities, in
fact. In it, you can clearly see where each dollar goes. (Also, you are
vastly underestimating either how much traffic AO3 gets or how much
servers/hosting costs.)
In my experience, people who don’t work in web design and hosting just have no concept of how heavy a load something like AO3 would have. Not only is the traffic absolutely buck wild, but the quantity of data that archive needs to store is fuckoff crazy.
I’m talking “more than the library of congress” crazy. The only reason
it doesn’t require Netflix levels of data serving is that it’s text
based rather than video.
AO3 is in the top 300 websites in the world, and the top 100 in the US. It is the number 2 literature website.
Number 2 in the entire world. JSTOR is 20.
It sees about 6 million people a day.
About 250k an hour. Each of those people is loading multiple pages, many are running
searches that execute on literally hundreds of potential variables per
search. The demands involved are astronomical.
JSTOR, btw, makes 85 million dollars a year.
It’s 18 ranks below AO3′s traffic, and takes in 650 times the amount of money.
But let’s say you think that’s an unfair comparison. Would you say that the Project Gutenberg Literature Archival Group- another text based archive that handles literature operating outside traditional copyright requirements- is more similar?
Because it sees all of 4% of the traffic that AO3 handles.
Care to guess its budget?
Double that of AO3.
AO3 is doing shit on the kind of shoestring budget that I fully, 100% cannot comprehend. And that’s just the archival service.
The 130k also pays for the OTW’s legal team, which they use to defend the right of fandom to fucking exist.
It’s
absolutely batshit fucked up that people are fighting to have the OTW
defunded and AO3 shut down. They are the only organized group that
actually stands directly between fandom- all the art and the fics and
the vids and the music and the chats and the memes and everything we
love about interactive, transformative work- and an incalculable amount of lawsuits.
The number of people on this blue hellsite who apparently do not understand how nonprofits work is mind-boggling (pro tip: by definition, THEY DON’T MAKE A PROFIT), as is the number of people with no idea about the cost of running something that gets that much traffic.
As someone who donated after they met their $130k goal, NO. I donated that money to AO3, for the purposed outlined in their budget. I expect it to be used by AO3 and OTW for those purposes.
When I want my money to go to other charities, I will donate directly to them.
People keep asking “How can anyone have a problem with AO3 doing fundraising!”
And I’m just like…. Have people not noticed all the virulent anti-AO3 hate on tumblr propagated by the anti shipping community? Antis have a problem with AO3 raising money because they hate the fact that AO3 won’t allow them to censor content they don’t like and doesn’t tolerate bullying. That’s who is putting out these posts like, “how can this nasty site raise so much money?” Read between the lines.
And for all the people who are just like, “If they don’t want AO3 to to raise money why don’t they just not donate?”
Because antis are incapable of saying “this isn’t for me so I won’t support it but I don’t care if other people support it. They have to actively discourage other people from supporting the thing. At the same time, they also won’t stop using AO3 because 1) they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites who want readership and that’s where the readers are and 2) they’re too lazy to put together their own archive using AO3′s open source code because that would require doing coding and buying servers and doing all the moderating they want, which is hard, and they just want to engage in empty virtue signalling, which is easy
Anyway, my point is, people need to be aware that these people are out there and they hate AO3 and they want it to go away even though they’re actively using the platform. They’ve even said they want AO3 to fail so something “better” (re, something they control) can take its place. Some of them are blatant about it, calling AO3 a cesspit of pedophilia, and some of them are subtle about it, saying more innocuous things like ‘Does AO3 really need 130K a year?” “Shouldn’t you give your money to individual needy people doing gofundmes for stuff that’s more more important?”
But all of these people have the same end goal, which is the destruction of the archive, and the way they’re going about it right now is to try to discourage people from donating.
So instead of asking, “Why do people object to AO3 raising money?” start telling people “Hey there are people out there who hate AO3 and want to destroy it and we have to protect the archive from them.” And donate, if you can, and signal boost, if you can’t.
So, wow, this post really took off and got more notes than I thought it would. But, since there’s been so much stuff in the comments (and my inbox) on the same few themes I thought I’d do an update with a couple of amendments.
First: AO3 made its fundraising goal! Which is amazing. Thanks to everybody who donated and signal boosted and I’m so happy to see that some people were inspired to donate because of this post!
2nd: AO3 does not host child pornography.
Child porn is illegal. Creating or distributing it is a felony in the US, where AO3 is located. It also violates AO3′s TOS. Since some people do not seem to know what child pornography is, I thought I’d post a definition for you:
(8) “child pornography” means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where–
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
The key words here are “Visual depiction,” “use of a minor,” and “identifiable minor.” In other words, real images of real children engaged in real or simulated sex. Stop calling written works of fiction which depict imaginary characters engaging in sexual acts “child pornography.” Stop accusing the creators of said fanworks of felonies with no evidence. Stop throwing around scary sounding words like “literal child porn” to make your point; it’s offensive to the survivors of actual child porn and diminishes their abuse. It doesn’t make people take you seriously. It just shows that you have no grasp of the definitions of the words “literal” or “child porn.”
Yes, AO3 does host works depicting underage sex, and rape, and incest, and all manner of works you may be uncomfortable with. Yes, I support the OTW, not despite, but because of, the fact that they host these kind of works.
Why? Because AO3 is a space whose members are majority queer, majority female, and those individuals are more likely to be the victims of rape, sexual assault, and childhood sexual abuse than its perpetrators. Lots of those squicky fanworks are produced by survivors who are writing about these themes with depth and intelligence. Many of these survivors use fic to process trauma, and many of them use AO3 to connect with other survivors. If you ban these kinds of fanworks, you are shaming and silencing a group of people who have already been shamed and silenced.
“But I wasn’t talking about those fanworks!” You say. Thoughtful works which critically examine the topics of rape and abuse are fine. I just want AO3 to get rid of all the gross fetishistic fic created by pedophiles so they can get off.”
The problem is, you cannot ban one without banning the other. Either you allow works that depict underage sex or you don’t. Either you allow works that depict rape or you don’t. Saying that you should ban works that are “graphic” or “explicit” requires people to make subjective judgments about which people will disagree. And in the end, what you’re really asking is for mods to judge and decide which works have redeeming value and which ones don’t. And you can’t. One persons trigger is another’s catharsis.
Neither can you say that something is inherently bad because its purpose is arousal. Arousal is a complicated thing. Some survivors were aroused during their rape or assault. Does that mean they wanted it? Of course it doesn’t. So why would we assume that readers who are aroused when reading a fanwork want what’s going on in the fanwork to happen to them or someone else in real life? Also, how do you know if the author was aroused when they wrote the fic, or if the reader is aroused by reading it? You don’t. So don’t use this as a metric.
People say that fanworks depicting minors having sex with adults are used to groom children. Abusers have been using toys and candy and promises to groom children for centuries. The blame should always be placed on the abuser, not the tool they use to groom.
People say that works depicting rape or childhood sexual abuse are triggering for survivors. Anything can be a trigger for a survivor. All kinds of innocuous things can become associated with traumatic memories. There are lots of things that are common triggers, and AO3 has Archive Warnings for some of the biggest: Death, Underage, Rape/Noncon, and Graphic Violence. There are others, too, like drug use, miscarriage, abortion, etc. Writers who use the archive are generally pretty good at using these warnings, and AO3 recently rolled out a new filtering system which makes it even easier to exclude certain warnings and tags from searches. Every person is responsible for curating their own archive experience, and reading fanfic, like everything else in life, comes with risks of being triggered. AO3 actually does a much better job than mainstream media, which generally has only vague ratings, at helping people navigate those risks.
Finally, there are people who just seem to be ignorant of how much servers and bandwidth cost, who insist that the AO3 fundraiser is a “scam” and that AO3 staff are “pocketing” money. To these people, all I have to say is that AO3 posts their budget online. It’s totally transparent. You can see exactly where the money goes (answer, 115K went to their server overhaul).
Anyway, thanks again to everyone who donated and signal boosted, we did it!
This blogger remembers when we had to put disclaimers at the head of our fics and pray that someone didn’t take it into their heads to sue us for what we created.
This blogger remembers brilliant artists and writers getting decades of work obliterated on LJ because someone who wanted to tell people what they were allowed to create went running to someone who wanted a profit, and told them the artists and writers had been naughty.
This blogger remembers just how hard the creators of AO3 worked to build the thing we all seem to take for granted now.
This blogger watched friends dive into the creation process so heartily and determinedly that they all but disappeared from the writing/gaming/artistic side of their fandom for YEARS while they worked to make the archive happen.
This blogger remembers the sense of giddy wonder that there would possibly be LAWYERS involved, willing to defend our right to create these works, and not leave us hanging at the mercy of corporate legal teams.
This blogger is aware that she reads between twenty to fifty books’ worth of material every year on AO3, and is never REQUIRED to pay a penny for the privilege of getting access.
This blogger is aware that she will not ever see advertisements on AO3, and that her personal data and reading preferences won’t be sold to advertisers in order to raise the money that AO3 needs to pay for the services they provide.
This blogger is aware that AO3 is, and has always been, a labor of love; by fans, for fans, and not for profiting off fans – and this is what makes it unique in the whole of the media universe.
This blogger has NEVER taken AO3 for granted, and has ALWAYS been damned glad to have access to it. Even in years when this blogger didn’t have the means to support it financially.
Team projects in university are always amazing, especially if your partner leaves you hanging. I should have seen this one coming, but I decided to give it a try and trust that person. Yeah, well, not a good decision.
Now I’m on my own in this project and I need 80 participants who will fill this questionnaire for me:
It only takes about 5 minutes. Promise. It’s about personal attitude towards bisexuality (well, stereotypes, to be exact), as well as general knowledge about sexual and gender identities. It works on mobile just as well as on computer and it doesn’t matter whether you are bisexual or not or how much you know on that topic.
I have to hand in my report on Oct, 31st and I will need a few days for statistical analysis, so I’ll have the questionnaire open until Oct, 28th.
As an extra incentive, I’ll offer one sketch commission per 20 people who complete the questionnaire, chosen at random from every reblog of this post.
I really need that mark! So please, signal boost and if you have 5 minutes to spare, please take the questionnaire. Thank you so much!
I’ve seen a bunch of people in the notes concerned (like I was) of comparisons of members of the lgbt to dogs: but upon visiting their website I was reassured that they monitor a variety of content, including (but not limited to):
THIS IS A GOOD SITE
Yeah, this site is literally so people can check for content they don’t want to see…or in some cases content that would make them physically or mentally ill. (I have strobe issues myself…)
It’s highly useful for a lot of people.
I had no idea they warned for strobe effects, that’s awesome! They give me headaches and nausea.
Reblogging because I’m fucking tired of seeing queer people die
Wait, I thought we were just supposed to ignore helpful means of filtering content and yell directly at content creators. Is that not what we’re doing?
The “if voting did anything they’d make it illegal” quip is a pretty strong argument that voting matters a lot, because they’ve been consistently trying to make or keep voting illegal for poor and marginalized peoples for several centuries now
Frankenuff’s Castle 