Sorry for the super long comment, haha – it's mostly just from quoting your v insightful review!
First, I think it’s a mistake to include AO3 sandwiched between Tumblr and Instagram in a chapter called “Platforms, Algorithms, and Digital Kairotic Space” without making incredibly clear that AO3 lacks what people mean when they say “algorithm.” Almost more than being nonprofit, the lack of a recommendation function profoundly shapes users’ experience on the site; Howell spends a fair amount of time criticizing how algorithms can segregate disabled people on Instagram and Tiktok, for example.
Ooh yeah. That's a huge problem imo.
Howell continues: “Whiteness and ability also exist as defaults when users post” because of the required archive warnings, which she equates with trigger warnings. “Notably absent are markers of identity-based triggers—one may post racist, ableist, or otherwise oppressive content with no warning.” I understand that this is a difficult topic, but for that very reason it is facile to criticize this decision without engaging with the reasons behind it, which Howell does not. None of the existing warnings are “identity-based” for some pretty good reasons, well discussed by the Policy and Abuse Committee in the recent discussion about why no such mandatory warnings were added in the recent round of TOS revisions—they’re unenforceable, inherently arbitrary, and reporting is easily abused in ways likely to harm marginalized and minoritized groups.
Yeah. I do actually think a 'slavery' warning would be a good thing, and I have a lot of time for the idea that a racism warning would be useful, but it's a very complicated conversation!
creators have accessibility needs too, and just as one person’s need for a quiet space can conflict with another’s need to stim, one person’s need not to perseverate over whether they’ve tagged properly can conflict with another’s need for warnings—but Choose Not to Warn at least gives the latter a sign. She quotes another analysis stating that almost a third of works use choose not to warn, “meaning that a significant proportion of Archive users are actively refusing the warning system in its current iteration.” Maybe … but maybe they are using it? It’s a fair criticism that we undervalued blocking/muting at the start, but that’s a different decision than making a racism or ableism tag mandatory.
Yeah. There needed to be blocking/muting but it's very silly to treat Choose Not To Warn as opting out of the system rather than using it! This feels like it goes along with the whole 'recenter the fan in the value system of AO3', this way of separating creators from audiences that just doesn't reflect how fandom works.
“Users who operate under the idea that AO3 should preserve fanworks regardless of content or function and who refuse to use archive warnings bump up against those who find themselves sorting through overt and implied racism; whitewashed ships; harmful content; and the OTW’s steadfast insistence that the system works and will not be changed.” Yes, this is true. But the implicit suggestion that creators (“users”) should be compelled to use Archive warnings—or other warnings—needs justification, especially since it is not the default in the rest of the creative world. Tags can be accessibility tools—but they are also other things, and the ability to avoid using tags is also an accessibility tool, in a classic example of competing needs.
Yep! I do think the OTW is too slow to acknowledge problems but that's still not justification in itself that creators should have to use warnings. And it feels weird to me that – as far as I can tell from what you've quoted here – she hasn't gone much into tags VERSUS warnings on AO3, and how tags are used to add extra content notes/warnings or go into more detail? Which is a v important point in my view – the practicalities of that, how the tags give more info but aren't quite as easy to filter.
Similarly, a later discussion of Instagram and Tiktok, including Black/disabled influencers, includes the sentence “Those who critique fandom, branding, and capitalism as postfeminist undercut the agency of marginalized women who pursue branding, commodification, or other types of postfeminist activities.” Then, a few pages later, “Opel states, correctly, that the culture labeled as postfeminist, or culture that focuses on the self as a brand, elevates white femininity.” What exactly is postfeminist here? Maybe the problem is that she’s not identifying the “those” doing the critiquing or labeling of things as postfeminist. Putting actors in sentences can force some decisions on your writing.
DEFINE YOUR TERMS. Argh. Purely on a writing level this is unjustifiable! And while gender (and race) is obviously relevant to conversations around making money/getting influence via fandom and the shifting norms around that, I don't think it's the central lens, anyway. Idk, maybe it's there in parts of the text that you didn't discuss, but like. Class! Money! Extremely relevant to this discussion, and to discussions of disabled influencers and online creators, no? I hate to sound like a Bernie bro, lol, but let's talk economics here! I feel like the question of norms around branding and commodification in fandom is very much about gender (who's fine as long as they're having a nice non-paid creative hobby, who expects to get paid for their creative work) but it's also SO much about class, and norms set by largely well-off people. The sort of 'is it cool and feminist or girlbossy white feminism to make money off fandom activities' framing just doesn't take you very far analytically, in my view, and that's really even more true when you're writing about disability in fandom specifically.
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Date: 2024-12-11 03:27 pm (UTC)First, I think it’s a mistake to include AO3 sandwiched between Tumblr and Instagram in a chapter called “Platforms, Algorithms, and Digital Kairotic Space” without making incredibly clear that AO3 lacks what people mean when they say “algorithm.” Almost more than being nonprofit, the lack of a recommendation function profoundly shapes users’ experience on the site; Howell spends a fair amount of time criticizing how algorithms can segregate disabled people on Instagram and Tiktok, for example.
Ooh yeah. That's a huge problem imo.
Howell continues: “Whiteness and ability also exist as defaults when users post” because of the required archive warnings, which she equates with trigger warnings. “Notably absent are markers of identity-based triggers—one may post racist, ableist, or otherwise oppressive content with no warning.” I understand that this is a difficult topic, but for that very reason it is facile to criticize this decision without engaging with the reasons behind it, which Howell does not. None of the existing warnings are “identity-based” for some pretty good reasons, well discussed by the Policy and Abuse Committee in the recent discussion about why no such mandatory warnings were added in the recent round of TOS revisions—they’re unenforceable, inherently arbitrary, and reporting is easily abused in ways likely to harm marginalized and minoritized groups.
Yeah. I do actually think a 'slavery' warning would be a good thing, and I have a lot of time for the idea that a racism warning would be useful, but it's a very complicated conversation!
creators have accessibility needs too, and just as one person’s need for a quiet space can conflict with another’s need to stim, one person’s need not to perseverate over whether they’ve tagged properly can conflict with another’s need for warnings—but Choose Not to Warn at least gives the latter a sign. She quotes another analysis stating that almost a third of works use choose not to warn, “meaning that a significant proportion of Archive users are actively refusing the warning system in its current iteration.” Maybe … but maybe they are using it? It’s a fair criticism that we undervalued blocking/muting at the start, but that’s a different decision than making a racism or ableism tag mandatory.
Yeah. There needed to be blocking/muting but it's very silly to treat Choose Not To Warn as opting out of the system rather than using it! This feels like it goes along with the whole 'recenter the fan in the value system of AO3', this way of separating creators from audiences that just doesn't reflect how fandom works.
“Users who operate under the idea that AO3 should preserve fanworks regardless of content or function and who refuse to use archive warnings bump up against those who find themselves sorting through overt and implied racism; whitewashed ships; harmful content; and the OTW’s steadfast insistence that the system works and will not be changed.” Yes, this is true. But the implicit suggestion that creators (“users”) should be compelled to use Archive warnings—or other warnings—needs justification, especially since it is not the default in the rest of the creative world. Tags can be accessibility tools—but they are also other things, and the ability to avoid using tags is also an accessibility tool, in a classic example of competing needs.
Yep! I do think the OTW is too slow to acknowledge problems but that's still not justification in itself that creators should have to use warnings. And it feels weird to me that – as far as I can tell from what you've quoted here – she hasn't gone much into tags VERSUS warnings on AO3, and how tags are used to add extra content notes/warnings or go into more detail? Which is a v important point in my view – the practicalities of that, how the tags give more info but aren't quite as easy to filter.
Similarly, a later discussion of Instagram and Tiktok, including Black/disabled influencers, includes the sentence “Those who critique fandom, branding, and capitalism as postfeminist undercut the agency of marginalized women who pursue branding, commodification, or other types of postfeminist activities.” Then, a few pages later, “Opel states, correctly, that the culture labeled as postfeminist, or culture that focuses on the self as a brand, elevates white femininity.” What exactly is postfeminist here? Maybe the problem is that she’s not identifying the “those” doing the critiquing or labeling of things as postfeminist. Putting actors in sentences can force some decisions on your writing.
DEFINE YOUR TERMS. Argh. Purely on a writing level this is unjustifiable! And while gender (and race) is obviously relevant to conversations around making money/getting influence via fandom and the shifting norms around that, I don't think it's the central lens, anyway. Idk, maybe it's there in parts of the text that you didn't discuss, but like. Class! Money! Extremely relevant to this discussion, and to discussions of disabled influencers and online creators, no? I hate to sound like a Bernie bro, lol, but let's talk economics here! I feel like the question of norms around branding and commodification in fandom is very much about gender (who's fine as long as they're having a nice non-paid creative hobby, who expects to get paid for their creative work) but it's also SO much about class, and norms set by largely well-off people. The sort of 'is it cool and feminist or girlbossy white feminism to make money off fandom activities' framing just doesn't take you very far analytically, in my view, and that's really even more true when you're writing about disability in fandom specifically.