I love the fact that ao3 doesn't have an algorithm. Being able to curate my experience through tag filtering is something I love.

As a FFnet refugee, I really can't understand a portion of Wattpad refugees. AO3 is the gold standard of fanfiction sites in my opinion and they want to change it?

The argument that the "ao3 site is ugly" is hilarious to me because it CAN be changed. Site skins exist! I've been chilling with a purple skin with pastel tags for about a year now

AO3 taught me how to mind my business. Tag that I think is genuinely vile and criminal? Not gonna read it, none of my business. Am I a little curious as to why anyone would write that? Yeah, but I’ll just have to live not knowing

I saw I joke once that I think explained part of the issue well

Wattpad: I fell in love with my teacher
AO3: Age gap, dubious consent, minor, abusive dynamic, power imbalance...

Like, I think the seeing ingredients thing also works.  I don't genuinely think the AO3 fics are worse than Wattpad, I think that the fics on AO3 just are expected to document what is in them more

thank god for ao3 not folding

They’re just mad their “dark romance” and “sold to one direction” is tagged with human trafficking and abusive parents and dubious consent and stuff. They’re mad that the stuff is tagged and pointing out what it actually is

Ngl, I went through the whole pipeline of being a Wattpad user, then a Tumblr user, and finally discovering AO3, and I’ll NEVER go back to Wattpad 😭 Especially after seeing how insanely often you get hit with ads just from swiping through chapters now.

The funniest thing I’ve seen on this whole thing is a Tumblr post saying something like “Naomi Novak would be horrified by what AO3 has become with all this DDDNE content!” and Naomi herself replying with “No 🙂”

1:57 "It contains a lot of illegal content" AND SELLING SOMEONE TO ONE DIRECTION ISN'T ILLEGAL?

Edit: Having a field day reading all of these replies

AO3 is simple, only 3 basic rules apply:
- Don't like, Don't read.
- Tag your 💩 (or acknowledge "Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings")
- Kudos!!! (at minimum, if you want to see more from the writer)

Ideally, donate what you can during donation drives too!

AO3 is such a breath of fresh air from the algorithms we're so used to. Thinking for yourself, making decisions for yourself, is severely underrated 😅😅😅

Someone on TikTok described the hypocrisy of their outrage as "AO3 is bold where Wattpad is subtle. They don't like that they can't use soft, fluffy language to search up questionable content on AO3. They HAVE to say it like it is, and it ruined their perception of themselves because AO3 doesn't let them hide how degenerate they are" and yeah. I agree that's at least a part of it. AO3 held up a mirror and they hated what they saw because the mirrored was clean and whole, not cracked and dirty so you could make up an ideal image. Their moral purity needed the deniability of soft language

Edit: 16:38 nailed it

No censorship on AO3, ever. 💐

10:45 it’s also an ARCHIVE, if we arent archiving “amateur” writing then it isnt an archive, it’s a personal library. This is how we lose out on so much historical culture because only the greatest works get archived

I only have seen one person clearly from Wattpad, kindly informed them of Tagging Guidelines and Ships. They fixed it, said thanks and we both moved on.
Sometimes we need to remember the loud minority is still as minority. Most people are sane and just want to be sure their stories are told somewhere.

I feel that a part of this problem is that since wattpad users are used to their site operating as a social media it’s a cultural shock coming over to ao3 because they’re not used to their main fanfiction website operating as an archive and not a social media. Also, I find it ironic that wattpad users are horrified that there are illegal things in ao3 fanfics. Like, selling your daughter to one direction or Harry Styles is not legal. It’s human trafficking. Ao3 has filters, very clear tags, warning labels, and a second warning before you read a fic with darker tags. Ao3 gives them every opportunity to know what’s in the fic and filter it out.

Real talk, the first place I stumbled across graphic depictions of CSA ...was Wattpad. Completely untagged, no warning. Hardcore fetish stuff? Also Wattpad. I was 14. I didn't stay on the site for long.

Meanwhile, Ao3 tags literally everything, so I could easily avoid anything that I wasn't comfortable reading. (Not to mention that most of their "underage" stuff is just. like. two teenage characters having consensual sex.)

How people looked at those two websites and decided that Ao3 is the problem, I'll never know.

I discovered wattpad AFTER ao3 & im belatedly realizing how spoiled we all are cuz we don't gotta deal with ads😭, deadass the idea of paying for ao3 premium is wild to me

if people are worried about the effects of fiction on people, then what you do is campaign for better education, not to ban works