AO3 is an anti-capitalist marvel and we should fight like hell to keep it that way
So this has been bouncing around my brain for some time, but just now I saw a post about people pushing for ads and for monetizing fic on AO3 and about its connection to professional publishing, and it rattled me enough that I thought: I’m going to write this today.
For the longest time, my most popular Tumblr post was about the OTW elections in 2016 and how things seemed to be a shambles over there. In the earlier days of AO3’s fundraising, I was baffled by what the board could be doing with that amount of money, and didn’t understand why they wouldn’t get fucking organized, and hire a director or a more formal accountant and people who could update the Archive’s code, or do dozens of other things that seemed glaringly obvious to me (remember the million dollars in the Paypal account?). I thought a lot about getting involved myself to see if I could help change things (arrant youthful arrogance! haha), but had the kind of job at the time that made that almost impossible. I would scour OTW posts and news and talk to my friends who were volunteers and just kept thinking, Why is this like this? It could be so much better!
But here’s the thing: it's been some time since I realized that I was really, really wrong then.
I was wrong in two ways: in my perspective, and—though this second thought is less developed—I also think I was wrong in my naïveté about what happens when you try to “organize” something like AO3, and about how that project can easily become one of corporatization and monetization. (Since many of us create based on copyrighted material, I appreciate that monetization of this space would not be simple. But hey: don’t give capitalists a challenge, because they will run like hell until they find that loophole, enshittify the thing that matters to you, and somehow make you pay double for the thing you created in the first place.)
So firstly, perspective. I was looking at the situation and thinking whyyyy, when I should have been looking with heart-eyes and wondering howwww?
The amount of joy I have gotten from AO3 is almost incalculable. There is nothing in my adult life that is more consistent or ongoing than my use of AO3. That sounds wacky, but bear with me: over the last almost-twenty years, my life has changed a lot. I have changed a lot. The one thing that hasn’t? Visiting AO3.
AO3, the community that contributes to it, and the works hosted there have gotten me through heartbreak and illness and warzones and loss and a global pandemic and fear, and they’ve accompanied me in times of joy and discovery and love and change and excitement and accomplishment. I think this must be true of so many of us. This website has millions of users and millions of fanworks, and over the last 18 years this incredible source of joy has been run entirely by people who love it, just because they love it.
That is such a remarkable thing, and—while I know we all know this and talk about it; none of this is new—we don’t celebrate it and marvel at it enough, I don’t think. About a year ago I was describing AO3 to my spouse and saying: this is something built by (primarily) women and queer people, which is in itself more unusual than it should be, and it centers creativity and exchange and is not monetized in any way, despite the fact that everything else in the world that has this size and scope is monetized. Users contribute content and expertise and energy; volunteers contribute content and expertise and energy; often users are volunteers, so this is also a space in which those who benefit are continually engaged in preserving and supporting the space they inhabit.
And this? This is an anti-capitalist wonder. It is a near-fucking-miracle that this thing exists in the form that it does in 2026, and it only exists this way due to the love and generosity of thousands of people around the world, who give of themselves so that this joyful project can persist and endure.
I really do not think it is an overstatement to say that the existence of AO3 in this form represents an incredibly revolutionary, subversive, political act, and one that is ongoing. (I know this may be giving “syllic, please touch grass!” energy; people are being exterminated as I type this, and you should also volunteer and donate and fight and speak out in the world whenever you can, but I will perish on the hill that these two things are not mutually exclusive. Creation matters.)
So ten years ago (when, incidentally, the conditions for AO3’s existence in this form were much kinder and conducive), when I was asking, “Why is this such a shambles?” what I really should have been asking was, “My god, how is this fucking possible?” Because it’s truly an amazing thing. It’s actually one of the most amazing things in my life, but I’ve gotten so used to it—it’s such a bedrock of what I do most days—that I often take it for granted. I don’t feel deep gratitude and appreciation for it nearly as regularly as I ought.
Now. In an ideal world, we would not be asking volunteers around the world to keep a website with millions of users running without paying them for their labor. And people far more knowledgeable than I say there are ways to make AO3 technologically better, and that would be ideal too. There are also real issues to tackle within it, as there are in the broader world—systemic racism, for one, and the general depredations of modern technology, which AO3 is really not prepared to handle, I don’t think. So it makes sense that we’d all want to see some of these things addressed.
But here’s the thing. I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life working in big, big non-profit organizations, and I have seen first-hand the ways in which people with the best possible intentions begin to engage in corporate actions that move the organization further and further away from its mission, even as they think they are not doing so. This is because so much of our thinking is grounded in capitalism. The concepts of making things “organized” or of things “running smoothly” are so deeply intertwined with the corporate, monetized structures of our overall culture that it is almost impossible to get just a “little” corporate. Corporate is hungry. Corporate eats up the things around it. You start making one thing “efficient,” and then before you know it someone realizes that there’s a way to make it more “efficient,” and (guess what!) there’s always a tool or method developed in the deepest corporate hellhole of the United States that is available to help you achieve that “efficiency”! Once it begins, this is a process that is hard to stop.
I am obviously not saying that there is no point in thinking about how we might make AO3 stronger, more nourished as a space, or more grounded in deep expertise that already exists within our community (and as a side note, let me say: it was hard to find words that weren’t economically based when I was trying to describe this)! I’m not a slippery-sloper, and all of those things are possible, I’m sure. But I guess I am saying there is no easy answer to some of these questions or criticisms, because what AO3 is now is so unique and incredible and counter-cultural. Even as things about it are changing—I have a whole other rant about metrics, engagement, and the way in which some newcomers to fandom are bringing to it capitalist practices that I find really damaging—it still remains a marvelous, almost belief-defying thing. And I am beginning to think that many of the things about it that can be so frustrating may actually also be the things that are preserving the space’s character. The overall current of capitalism (and it’s quite the current) is so hard to withstand; you need to work actively to resist it. AO3 does, actively and passively.
It’s decentralized and horizontally organized, and depends on people’s goodwill and care, and the people volunteering to run it are determined to keep it as it is, when there would probably be great financial incentive in transforming it at this stage in its existence. It’s not owned by anyone; no one profits. It is, as the name suggests, ours: communal, collective, and, at its best, a shared responsibility.
Historically, spaces and communities of shared creation have been limited in size; they are often based locally, or depend on existing connections. And AO3 radically democratizes that, by remaining committed to being a space with no barriers to entry (except perhaps waiting for an invitation to access some fanworks, which is fair enough), and which has a deep respect for authors’ and artists’ and podficcers’ work. It allows those creators to keep their work as their own, and does not seek to scrape it or profit from it, but simply provides—for free! Without trying to sell creators anything! Without stealing creators' data to fund its operations!—a communal site to share what they make using their talent, and to connect with other makers. It’s a place where first-time writers and people who have spent decades writing can converge and convene, and it continues to be shepherded primarily by people who are not centered in broader society. That’s amazing.
I have no good way to end this, except to say that I’m going to directly volunteer my energy where I can to preserving AO3, and that I will be donating to support it, and that I am so, so grateful to everyone who has done so over the years, and continues to do so. To quote my dear @triassictriserratops, fandom is a verb. And AO3 is the artery along which much of its action runs.
If you’re like me, I encourage you to take a moment today to think: I am part of something incredible. This thing is special and unique. I should value it, for all kinds of reasons, every day. And I should fight to keep it alive, as it is, because its existence is a kind of resistance, and that really, really matters.
(And if you can? Donate and/or volunteer!)
