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ITT: the OTW doubles down on its cruelty and bullying of AO3 volunteers
[cross-posted from twitter] Do you volunteer with AO3? You should be aware that if the Board or Legal dislikes you, they will isolate you, abuse you, throw you under the bus, and then make threatening org-wide Slack posts when you have the temerity to talk about what they did to you.
The OTW sent these communications out in response to Azarias talking about her truamatizing experiences volunteering for AO3's content moderation team, during which she was repeatedly exposed to real and suspected CSEM, forbidden by Legal to remove the vast majority of content, ignored when she advocated for better tools to handle the extremely traumatizing material she was being routinely exposed to, and kicked out when members of the Board and Legal decided to use a mass CSEM spam and doxx/death threat event, a serious crime, as a pretext for her removal.
There is no excuse for this; this is transparently an intimidation tactic, to get azarias and other volunteers to shut up and stop shining light on the unbelievably fucked-up organizational culture the Board and Legal have imposed. They have not produced a single shred of substantiation that makes this extremely implausible story make sense. As a reminder, you can read azarias talking about these same events for yourself.
Azarias is a human fucking being who was bullied by the OTW Board and OTW Legal for a long time BEFORE the 2022 CSEM attack, and they used that attack -- the THIRD azarias had experienced in addition to her traumatizing CSEM moderation work with AO3 -- to kick her out of the org.
How is this acceptable? How is this humane? How is it ethical? And, side note, why the FUCK would you let a volunteer come back who you thought sent CSEM to 900+ volunteers? You're not even good at lying, but it's hurting people anyway, bc that's what isolation and abuse does.
There is always a human cost to moderation but it doesn't have to involve giving volunteers literal, IRL trauma bc you want to run a 503(c) like a fucking LJ flashfic comm & you feel comfortable allowing low-level volunteers to absorb the worst the archive has to offer.
This is beyond inexcusable and what are members supposed to do? The Board provides no means for accountability or remediation of harm. And they're led around by their noses by Legal, who are more than happy to cultivate an abusive environment for volunteers.
The OTW's values statement includes: "We value our volunteer-based infrastructure and the fannish gift economy that recognizes and celebrates worth in myriad and diverse activities.". What a fucking joke. Everyone involved in this steaming pile of shit should resign.
star-the-honeybun asked:
what... should we do about this?! should we just set Ao3 down, find a way to choke down such fucking feelings that we should have been used to by now, and go use squidgeworld or somethin until it too goes down that route or whatever? there isn't any hope, is there? how do we cope with this?!
pearwaldorf answered:
I mean this in the most loving way possible and I’m not picking on you specifically, to be clear. The easiest way to make something hopeless or inevitable is to treat it as a foregone conclusion.
There is a Jewish precept called tikkun olam. Roughly translated it means “world repair”, which modern Jews have taken to mean an obligation to practice tzedakah (justice/righteousness) and participate in efforts to make the world better. I’m not Jewish, but it is a thing I strongly believe in.
Nowhere in these teachings is stuff about whether or not it will change things. Of course it is a hope you will, but none of that is guaranteed. There are things you do not because you think you will succeed, but because it is the right thing.
You’re not wrong that trying to hold the OTW Board accountable is difficult. It is indeed hard to get it through people’s heads that this organization that has done so much for fandom is also deeply dysfunctional in a way that is probably not reformable, especially in a climate where people are prone to “everything has to be entirely good/bad” and other such black and white thinking.
If we see something is wrong and we don’t speak out, what does that say to azarias and other OTW volunteers? That their abuse and traumatization is an acceptable price to pay for keeping AO3/OTW running? That we are willing to sacrifice our fellow fans’ humanity on the altar of the non-profit industrialization complex? (And make no mistake, a non-profit is capable of just as much abuse as any money-making business.)
I don’t have a next steps Powerpoint or anything, but I think a reasonable action to take is to contact OTW and express your displeasure at how things have been handled. (I think Communications is probably the most appropriate dropdown, but if anybody has a better suggestion please let me know.)
Be polite, and list your affiliations with AO3/OTW if you have any (member/former member/donor, AO3 user, volunteer/former volunteer, etc). Make clear (if) you are part of the community this organization claims to represent.
Demand the resignation of the Legal Committee and the Board of Directors. Insist upon the creation of a new policy to protect volunteers from this sort of abuse and endangerment and a timeline for when it will be developed and implemented.
I don’t know what kind of response you’ll get, but I would not be surprised if it’s extremely generic.
I anticipate there will be more opportunities to make your opinion known in the future. This is an issue that should not be swept aside.
person w adhd experiencing symptoms of adhd: why the fuck can’t I do this thing . I wish there was some explanation for this