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AO3 was created deliberately as the place for taboo fanfiction that no one else wanted to host.
It was created in significant part in response to the spontaneous deletion of adult and queer content fanfic on other archives; specifically fanfiction.net and livejoural.com.
I cannot stress this enough. Fanfiction.net and livejoural.com straight up deleted users adult and queer content without warning, backup or recourse.
AO3 was created so that authors could host queer fic, porn, and transgressive adult material without the threat of deletion.
AO3 was created as the place for shipcest and underage fic.
If you want a clean archive with no taboo material, those archives exist. AO3 was created to be their alternative.
Fans had other (often long-standing) reasons for wanting to help build a new multifandom archive. Strikethrough happened a few weeks after astolat’s initial post, driving home the point that it was not safe to rely on commercial entities to preserve fan culture.
–from the fanlore article on AO3
It turned out that LiveJournal had permanently suspended over 500 journals based on the users’ interest lists. Interests that were likely to get a journal banned included but were not limited to: child pornography, incest, pedophilia, rape, domestic violence, BDSM, prostitution. Journals that listed things like murder, crime, drugs, cocaine, theft, tax evasion or election fraud among their creators’ interests were not banned: interests related to sexual crime were the targets.
I remember the general feeling of panic and outrage (sometimes at the same time) where people felt like they were being treated like criminals and that the complete lack of understanding from LJ staff made some feel unwelcome (hence moves to other platforms). I remember some people stipulating that LJ/6A didn’t think fandom had big enough presence on LJ to treat us seriously (which is how fandom counts started). It was basically the beginning of the end, because once we stopped feeling safe in our spaces, we looked for other places. Once Dreamwidth entered beta, the feature enabling crossposting to LJ was their biggest selling point that made many people move to DW. [4]
meeedeee wrote: “I remember being stuck on small island with slow slow net speed as events were unfolding. Just a reminder that when for profit corporations own your platforms and control your means of communication, you are at their mercy and whims. (Hint to tumblr users) Archive of Our Own – AO3 sprang from the Strikethrough 07 events.”
–from the fanlore article on striketrhough
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