Is archiveofourown.org Safe?

Even though there is adult content in some works, these works can be spotted easily through the ratings and tags. Works rated as mature content also require you to verify that you are willing to read such content before the work opens. The site also has wonderful rating features, allowing you to completely filter out works with whatever content you are unwilling to read.

While it’s true that this website contains fanfiction with explicit fanfiction labeled as such, it does not verify the age of the reader. While the rating system is nice, it's the labels themselves that are highly problematic. Many of the labels give a very clear picture of what you wouldn’t want children to know about in the first place. The distinction between actually reading a story about child rape or reading the tag “child rape” is non-existent if you didn't know about child rape in the first place, and really it is only a matter of adjectives used. Reading that a warning that a story has "dick pictures with actual pictures of dicks" isn't a very useful tag, either, and reading about "brother/sister incest/non-consensual sex" or "self-cutting" is not a very useful tag. Until they change their tagging system to allow boiler plate tagging and no customized tags which are highly abuseable, I would not say this is a child safe site.

On one hand, this website is very, very safe, with no outside advertisers and lots of positive feedback from readers. There are lots of fics on here suitable for children, but at the same time, you can and probably will encounter pornographic fiction. AO3 does provide warnings and allow you to filter out these fics so it is up to your child to be responsible enough to do it.

This site does depend on one's own interests. This is a fanfiction site so therefore the only reason one would not approve would be because they do not have any vested interest or disagree with the content of the publications. Content that IS suitable for children IS PRESENT in this website archive. You must simply search & screen proficiently. When there is adult/violent content in a published work, it is marked with warnings by the author/narrator (in proportion to the material) to make readers/listeners explicitly & clearly aware before they decide to proceed to read/listen to the written/spoken work. The warnings can fall prey to subjectivity which is why I recommend screening but for the most part this community of readers and writers are very considerate, well intentioned and competent when it comes to informing others. I overall give this website a 100% trustworthy rating. I give child safety a cautionary/potentially inappropriate rating. If you find child appropriate works you will find very cute, funny, entertaining and even educational sometimes (morals, ethics, affection towards others, considerate of others, etc).

The site is great and trustworthy, probably one of the safest sites of its kind thanks to a complete lack of outside advertisers, but some of the content is definitely geared more towards adults. Most of it is marked and tagged appropriately, with warnings when an unregistered user clicks on it before proceeding to the content, but there's no verification to keep children out of it.

Also known as AO3, this fan fiction site is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), which promotes radical copyright reform like Pirate Parties do. Although based in the USA, the site will NOT respond to DMCA takedown claims for unlicensed derivative works which are "transformative" (their own definition) or contain quotes from other works (See paragraph IV-D of its Terms of Service). So if you're a content owner and you don't want to see stories of your characters in compromising positions, then good luck having them taken down. AO3 has a LEGAL OBLIGATION under federal law (DMCA) to take down unwanted fanfic. If OTW doesn't like it, then they should move the server to a foreign country such as Taiwan, which is not a signatory of the Berne Convention. Note that other fanfic sites such as FanFiction.Net and MediaMiner will acknowledge requests and even blacklist fanfic based on works by authors and publishers with a track record of taking down fanfic, hence I will not give those sites the "Potentially illegal" mark like I did with AO3. This site also allows adult content to be posted, but it has warning and filtering features that you can use to avoid it.

This is a great site with a great community. If you love fanfiction of all sorts, this is the place to go. But how it got an "excellent" child safety rating is absolutely beyond me. While it's far from the only thing around, this is a place where people go to write/read the sexual pairings that popular fiction would never be allowed to give them. Sometimes in great detail. Sure, there are simple "I am willing to view this content" confirmations on things that are flagged adult, but that doesn't make the content on the other side any more child safe.