emolumentsclause-deactivated201:

what you got from the OP was willfully decontextualized misinformation that served their point.

in reality, ao3 was created in response to a series of events on livejournal and fanfiction.net that brought to light the necessity for a fan-run, fan-owned transformative fiction hosting site where corporate TOS rules could not be manipulated by anyone with a right-wing, racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic agenda to get fanworks removed or communities taken down. which, at the time, was a real and ongoing problem on livejournal. 

you should take a look at their TOS. you might find it enlightening.

secondly, what i find troubling about this question is your use of language like “condones” and “promotes.” it’s all well and good to say “i think fiction with those themes are okay as long as they don’t condone or promote it,” but what does that actually mean? how is that enforced? the miller test and “i know it when i see it” aren’t applicable here. the majority of fiction that explores themes like rape and abuse doesn’t exist on a binary scale of “condemns” vs. “condones.” how do you enforce the “your fic must explicitly condemn X theme” rule? do the characters need to deliver an aesop’s fables-type moral at the end of the story? can i write an absolutely sickening story of rape and abuse for 18,000 words, then turn around and have the good fairy from little bunny foo foo come along and bop them on the head and turn them into goons and have that fit within the parameters of “not condoning it”? can i write something that explores the obviously warped and immoral decision-making and justifications of behavior of an abuser, and trust the audience to be able to differentiate between the character’s delusions and what is presented as reality around him, and have that taken down for “condoning” behavior i actually set out to condemn because nobody ever tells the guy off? does it’s always sunny in philadelphia condone everything its characters have ever done because they never actually learn a lesson from it? did breaking bad condone murder and drug kingpinnery because it got you to empathize, often against your will or judgment, with walter white?

it’s great to say “fiction that condones these themes shouldn’t be allowed or defended.” in theory. just like it’s great to say “we’re gonna break up the big banks and give everyone free college.” it’s appealing, but unless you have a meticulously detailed plan of action, it doesn’t work. and the thing is, there is no framework for regulating content on ao3 that would not inevitably be used by people with either bigoted beliefs or personal grudges to get other people’s innocuous work removed without merit. when you start implementing limitations to free and inclusive expression, people can and will manipulate those limitations to cause harm to others. 

look. i understand where your question is coming from and i’m not trying to make fun of you, but let me give you a little more context about myself. my parents are from the former soviet union, and although their parenting methods were not perfect, they raised me with a deep respect and adulation for the american constitutional right to free speech. i am to the first amendment what NRA members are to the second. i care VERY deeply about the freedom and protection of the press, about the freedom and protection of young people’s creative expression (don’t get me started on zero-tolerance policies that had high schools expelling teens for writing mildly violent fiction in the wake of columbine), and so forth. are there themes in fiction that trouble, trigger, or upset me? yeah, of course. but my sensibilities lie on an infinite plane with everyone else’s in the world. the specific rubric of themes that i find deeply offensive and upsetting, and the degrees to which they upset me, are unique only to me. which is why, in a situation like ao3′s, i really believe that their system – in which content that does not violate some other policy will not be removed, but the content you post must be properly warned for and tagged – is the most pragmatic approach to handling a plurality of personal moral and ethical codes and beliefs. 

finally, i would caution you against using objective, moralistic language like “it’s rly wrong to defend that” in my inbox, mostly because it makes me super disinclined to listen to what you’ve got to say. i’m taking this question in good faith but as someone with a heavily considered code of ethics that i’ve arrived to on my own, i’m not one to be lectured on morality by strangers. that’s all, just don’t do that to me again.