The Internet Isn't Designed for You (Yet)
In many ways, using the internet is a bit like visiting a restaurant: You can choose where to sit down and order, but everything else about the experience from the menu to the seating to how long you can stay is decided by somebody else. Business decisions aren't made for the consumer alone—they have to balance you alongside regulations, liability, public image, and of course, turning a profit. The internet is no different. To do anything online, you need a platform, and every platform has owners with an agenda. Unfortunately, that agenda almost never matches the needs and values of the people actually using the service (Fiesler, 2018). Think about streaming sites. Have you ever had a film or show you love disappear seemingly overnight? It's hardly a unique experience.
Since 2020, platforms such as Disney+ and HBO Max have taken dozens of originals offline, leaving fans frustrated and forcing them to pirate, rely on under-produced physical media, or wait in hopes of a rerun. No matter where we go online, we're subject to the agenda of whoever owns that platform, not the needs of the users themselves (Fiesler, 2018).
There’s one community online that has built one of the clearest examples of a user-created and user-maintained platform. It probably isn’t who you might think. Over the last few decades, media fans and their communities—or, “fandoms”—have gained an overall unsavory reputation. They are often dismissed as childish, embarrassing, or “cringe,” and their work—fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, etc—has consistently been devalued, censored, and exploited across the internet (Fiesler, 2018). This is in no small part due to the demographics that make up media fandoms. They are undoubtedly spaces dominated by women, the LGBTQ community, neurodivergent people, and youth—all groups historically marginalized, especially in tech and media industries (Fiesler, 2018).
Rather than accept the limitations and ostracization they experienced, it was fanfiction authors who decided to create a platform—or rather, an archive—of their own. Archive of Our Own (AO3) was created by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit created to “serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms.” The OTW built AO3 because every platform fans relied on at the time kept proving the same point: if you don’t own the space, you don’t control what happens to the things you make in it. For decades, fan authors were at the mercy of corporate platforms that would continually censor, delete, and judge their work. It is unsurprising then, that after AO3 entered open beta in 2009, it didn’t take long for fans to prove just how badly they’d needed a platform like this. Millions of stories poured in. By 2014, the archive had already reached one million uploaded works; by 2016, it had one million registered users. Today, it hosts over fifteen million pieces of fiction and nine million registered users (Organization for Transformative Works).
Platforms of this scale are typically associated with tech giants—corporations with massive budgets, paid engineers, legal teams—massive industries dominated by men. Tech spaces in general aren’t exactly welcoming to the marginalized demographics that make up most fandom communities. The earliest OTW organizers realized quickly that if they wanted an archive that truly respected fandoms, they couldn’t rely on outsiders to construct it. So, they made the practical decision to train fans to become the developers they needed (Fiesler, 2018). This approach worked. Experienced programmers in the community trained total beginners who had never touched code before, so they could contribute to building and maintaining the archive. To this day, AO3 continues to be entirely nonprofit and run by fans (Organization for Transformative Works). As such, every decision made regarding the platform reflects the community’s needs foremost, not a company’s goals. Running a massive platform like AO3 takes money, expertise, and ongoing work to maintain the site. By training fans to become developers rather than hiring outside experts, AO3 kept control over this process within the community. Over the years, this created a pipeline of people with real skills to take into other areas of tech. As Casey Fiesler puts it, the goal here wasn’t just creating developers for AO3; it was creating developers who could do whatever they wanted (Fiesler, 2018).
The point of this article isn’t just to shed light on the accomplishments of a misunderstood community on the internet. I also wanted to show how the process that created AO3 could be replicated just about anywhere. When users feel in control, they’re more likely to invest their time, money, and expertise into keeping the platform running. That investment strengthens the platform, which encourages even more contribution and eventually creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Communities that train their own developers result in people with the skills and empowerment required to build new user-centered platforms. Just as AO3 did, rather than relying on outside experts, new platforms can grow and train their own contributors, whose skills then apply to even more “by user, for user” projects. In the end, AO3 isn’t successful because its creators were extraordinarily skilled or well-resourced. It succeeded because an entire community of marginalized people refused to wait for a platform to decide to treat them well. Women, LGBTQ individuals, neurodivergent people, and young fans trained each other, built what they needed, and keep it running to this day because it matters to them. Their success shows the inherent power of all communities: that when people come together, they can create, sustain, and protect spaces that reflect their needs and values. Absolutely nothing about this process is exclusive to fandom. AO3 is just one example of what happens when users trust themselves to create a space of their own. There could be many more—and one day, we will have an internet that truly is designed for us.
references
Fiesler, Casey. “Owning the Servers: A Design Fiction Exploring the Transformation of Fandom into ‘Our Own.’” Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 28, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1453.