Hideo Kojima talking about The Voice of Hind Rajab, a movie that depicts the final moments of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl murdered by Israel. Kojima’s politics have always been pretty clear, but it’s good to see him speaking out.
Something genuinely interesting about the discussions around ao3 censorship is how many arguments come back to "AO3 could make this change and it wouldn't impact them."
"AO3 banning this would actually help them, because more people would come to the site."
People are so used to interacting with business models that they struggle to conceptualize any other model. Even when people tell them it's an NFP. Even when people explain they're all volunteers.
I want to be as clear as possible, no one AO3 is interested in growing the 'business'.
The more people using the site causes more work for their volunteers.
If less people used it, there would be less work for people to do, and as they're doing it for free, that could be welcomed.
The ENTIRE foundation of AO3 was based on the ethos the founders had of not wanting censorship in fanfics.
Saying "if you don't censor your fics I'm not going to use your site anymore!" To the people founders and volunteers of the 'non-consoring fics free site' is honestly laughable."
Its not a business, it doesn't follow a business model, you are not a customer, they are not looking to grow. I'm sure they're passionate about what they do... But what they do is run and volunteer a site that's against censorship.
On that, and this is a much bigger issue that Im not going to into in depth but worth touching on, people keep saying censoring would NOT be a 'slippery slope' because they can just ban the 'bad stuff'.
Two days ago I saw a tweet with 2k likes saying essentially "all ao3 has to do is ban real people fiction. That would get rid of all of the concerns." None of the concerns, until that tweet, I had seen had indicated that RPF was their concern. But this person, and 2k other people who liked it, apparently believe it is... presumably because they don't like RPF.
There have been attempts to create sites like AO3 but with censorship and they all failed. And ironically the main reason this discussion is occurring is because Wattpad increased their censorship... To satisfy people requesting more censorship. The difference is Wattpad is a business. AO3 is not.
Cara needs your help. We have been scraped a third time. This is now a targeted attack meant to cause artists pain.
Scrapers know we're a volunteer project with no financial means to respond. So they say it's legal, believing themselves untouchable.
We're taking action. 1/