So, there is something that I've wondered for a while wrt the need for a visual or video AO3. Text his nice because there doesn't exist a way for it to be per se illegal; you might be violating copyright or privacy, but it isn't a crime to write shit. On the other hand, there exist things that are and SHOULD BE illegal to distribute -- like csm of real world children -- and it seems like 1) you can't have a truly radically open content policy, 2) moderating is HARD. Thoughts?

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Any site, AO3 included, will prohibit genuinely illegal things. That's already in the rules everywhere and is already an exception to any radically open content policy.

It's entirely possible for text to be illegal. Cf. that hilarious tumblr post about including military secrets and such in fanfic.

The issue is around moderation. In practice, illegal text comes up rarely and is typically not traumatic for people trying to moderate it. But try providing free image hosting, and the pieces of filth who distribute actual photos of actual kids being harmed will swarm you. (And the people posting photos of people killing animals, beheading other people, etc.) This type of moderation is often traumatic for the person doing it. It's basically impossible at scale.

Facebook "solves" this by finding suckers with no options and destroying their mental health for minimum wage.

A fannish site doesn't have the money and hopefully doesn't have the stomach for that approach.

The thing I think can work for fandom is very simple: don't try to do it at scale.

Squidge has, inevitably, had an incident where someone tried to host actual abuse images, but it's still able to provide some fannish image hosting because it is vastly, vastly smaller than AO3 and is still operating on a more personal level.

One could put up a fan art archive for one's fandom and vet the artists before giving them accounts that can post images. Even the most cursory vetting (i.e. "Do you have a tumblr/twitter/etc. that looks fannish and has some art on it that seems to be by you?") would get rid of the vast majority of spammers.

The reason this happens only rarely is that it's a lot of work and takes a lot of money. Fan artists who want to monetize are better off on Etsy, making new accounts whenever they get booted for infringement. Fan artists who don't want to monetize don't have the money to support an archive (neither do most of the ones monetizing, let's be real).

Video is obnoxiously expensive to host, and Youtube is a pretty decent host for most fannish stuff these days. It has huge drawbacks, but trying to get most vidders to leave it would be like trying to convince FFN die-hards that FFN wasn't worth it in 2010. I've even found vids with male full frontal on Youtube that hadn't been spotted and booted yet.

Another reason it's uncommon is that, yes, images get into legal hot water faster, and most potential archive owners just don't want to deal with all that. This, again, is a reason to make archives that cater to a couple hundred art posters and a few thousand viewers rather than a massive central hub.

The only drawback to a small site is the ever-present fear that the mod will go broke, get bored, or be hit by a bus. These things don't have good longevity or contingency plans.

As an individual artist or vidder, your best bet is to put your work everywhere. The more places it is shared, the harder it is to get rid of all copies. This is a lot of extra work and means it's harder to maintain control, so lots of people don't bother, but it is the approach that works.

Personally, as a vidder, I love embedding on AO3 and I'm too lazy to be that careful about archival. I have vids from Escapade that aren't even up. I suppose I should sort out that one from the tentacle monster movie...