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QuestionHow do I report websites that post written child abuse content?
I didn't know where to post this question, I know this isn't specifically about women, but it doesn't directly relate to men or to trans activism either. Interestingly though, the majority of users of said website are unfortunately women (regardless of how they identify).
So my question is, does anyone happen to know how to report a website that posts (and doesn't seem to have any real rules against) CP content? I'm talking about AO3, a very popular fanfiction website. For anyone unfamiliar, the site isn't all bad, though unfortunately there is a lot of gross stuff posted there, including the aforementioned CP. Because it's fanfiction and not actual children, a lot of my search results resulted in people not taking it very seriously, which is pretty upsetting tbh.
I don't read fanfiction much anymore (partly because disgusting kinks and misogyny are rampant), but today I came across a disturbing fanfiction where in the description, the writer proudly and openly claims it features an 11 year old getting together with older characters. Judging by the tags it's a lot of really gross content. I reported the fic using the policy abuse link, but I doubt it will lead to anything tbh. For some reason this website doesn't seem to have a lot of rules regarding such content, and I find that pretty fucked up.
I'm not advocating to have the entire site taken down, but I would like to know how to go about reporting the site to whoever hosts the website, or whoever else I would need to report it to. I'm actually kind of shocked that such a large website allows people to openly post this type of content, especially because there's no real barriers keeping kids from finding it.
Also I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this. Seeing as it wasn't explicitly men who were responsible for this content, I didn't know where else to put it.
The content, while disturbing and gross, is legal in the US, the country in which AO3 operates. Legal freedom of expression to the extent that we have in the US allows for some nasty stuff, but it also means that the police can't legally harass women for saying TIMs are men, among other things. I don't like that that crap exists, don't get me wrong, but I don't trust any law that would outlaw it not to be expanded and weaponized against women.
AO3, which takes a largely maximalist view of freedom of expression, also owns its servers and doesn't rely on a hosting company. (Which is a smart move if you can manage it, given how many GC sites and blogs have been axed due to TRA complaints to hosting.)
I agree about not trusting the law, and I get that it's more difficult when it comes to fiction seeing as a lot of underage girls write this stuff themselves. Obviously if a kid has a crush on a teenage video game character and writes sexual content about them, I can kind of see that as a healthy expression of their creativity and such. However I have also seen so many disgusting kinks in the tags over and over again, stuff like choking and dubious consent, among the underage tags. I feel like it has to have some negative effects on young girls (and some boys, but it's mosly girls and women who read and write fanfiction) to continuously be exposed to that stuff even when created mostly by other girls and women.
I think at the very least they should be legally required to make sure the people using the site are actual adults. We may not take fanfiction as seriously as real porn (understandably), but as someone who first started reading such content around age 12, (over 20 years ago when the internet was way different, and finding it was a lot harder) I can only say that I'm glad I managed to avoid the more gross and toxic stuff. After you see tags like "choking", "dubious consent", and "rough oral" enough times, I can totally see how a young girl could start to normalize such acts, especially when they see thats it's mostly other girls and women writing it, and it's also girls and women praising how hot it is in the comments.
Btw when I say I agree that I don't trust the law, I meant more so I don't trust them to restrict some laws without taking more liberties that result in restricting other forms of speech, like they do with the CG stuff. I also don't approve of children reading or writing sexual content. But I don't want to remove young peoples ability to write about some topics in a healthy and creative manner. The main problem is what's being allowed on the site, and the lack of any real moderation or meaningful age verification.
Also given that fanfiction spans many different genres, there could be stories about child abuse that are told in a way that is not meant to be sexual. For example the book Lolita, which helps to show how awful pedophilia is, how the mind of a pedophile may try to justify their own actions, and how damaging their actions can be to their victims (despite how often the book has sadly been misinterpreted). So I can see how just making a blanket ban could limit those types of stories from being told. However in clear cases like the one I encountered I really do think such stories should be banned. It's pretty easy to tell when a story is just CP made to appeal to sickos, and that shouldn't be allowed to exist, even just in written form.
It's fiction, so I doubt child porn laws would cover it in the US at least.
At the same time I strongly suspect that sites such as these are monitored by anti-child porn LE agencies, as they must be one way that CSA enthusiasts get to know one another. Someone dips their toe in the water by penning something gross about "MAPs"; someone else sidles up to them and says, 'Would you like to see my etchings?', and they're off to the races. Even without getting sites to disclose personal info, user names must be one of the threads LE makes use of (and people, even tech savvy people, often insist on using variants on the same user names over and over). It's one way they build up networks of contacts.
tl;dr So, it's gross, no child should be within 1 nautical mile of such shite, but it's nowhere near the level of even Category C CSA images, and it's probably being monitored anyway.
There is a lot of gross content on ao3, just as there always has been in fandom spaces (though the rise of 'hard' kinks is new). The policy of ao3 is that it's an archive; they don't moderate content and there are no rules on what is posted, besides tagging correctly. I get where you're coming from, but it's not illegal to write fiction on those topics, and the site explicitly does not moderate content. The prevention is the 'check the box to show you are thirteen and choosing to interact with this' (which is the same level of prevention other adult sites offer, because legally, that's all that's required. After all, kids lie + the people who made the archive did so in response to widespread fandom censorship and operate under the old rules of the internet, wherein you (or your parents) are responsible for moderating your own experience.)
I think this is one of those things that's not worth fixating over, because it's not a fight you're going to win.
Anybody who writes things like that needs to be investigated- writing out fantasies is the next step to just thinking them. Unfortunately AO3 uses us law, it can only be reported for images or video of abuse. Maybe the content can be reported?
If it were me I'd look up the person's username and see if I could figure out who they are, and report that.
Unfortunately, the fandom people don't want strict moderation. I come from the old days; archives with passwords were seen as prudish and when Livejournal threatened to remove underage explicit fanfic, people rioted. As others said, it's legal and I just don't think you could even appeal to them to age restrict.