AO3 does moderate the content on their website.
They remove things that
- Are not fanworks (e.g. ficfinder posts, “what should I write next” posts, art commissions tagged with characters, spam, public domain works (like the Communist Manifesto) not written by the AO3 account holder;
- Are illegal in the US;
- Are harassment - fics, meta, and tags that attack other users are not allowed
- Include doxxing;
- Have commercial links (which they categorize as “spam,” but they will also remove things like “this work just contains the word ‘sex’ ten thousand times”)
- Probably a few other categories I’m forgetting.
They do non-removal moderation:
- They require that fics use one or more of the warning tags if they contain certain content (note: One of those tags is “Author Chooses Not to Warn”) - if the author won’t tag it, they will change it to CNTW.
- They require erotic content to be tagged “M” or “E” or “unrated,” and if the author won’t change it, they will switch the fic to “unrated.”
- They require the fandom tag be accurate; if it’s not, they may hide the fic.
- Over-tagging with false tags to get your work to show up in subscription feeds is not allowed, and authors may be suspended or banned for violating this rule.
- Fics must be tagged in the correct language. I’m not sure if they hide fics that refuse to do this, or if they’ll set the language themselves.
They moderate the content to make sure it’s in line with the TOS.
Don’t like how permissive the TOS is? You don’t have to use the archive. AO3 was not created to be everyone’s favorite spot; it was created to host content that kept getting banned in other places.
If you think that content should be banned… note that a lot of it was adult M/M fics with no detailed sex on the page. That stuff used to be banned in a lot of fic archives. In others, any fic where two men kissed was required to be labeled R-rated.
If you think AO3 should allow gay fanfic but not some of the other content it allows…
Feel free to make a detailed list of what shouldn’t be allowed, and how people can be trained to spot it objectively, and submit that as a suggestion.
(If you think it shouldn’t allow fics with incest - you’ll have to define incest. Which country or state’s laws will you use? In my state, first cousins can get married; that’s not considered incest here. In the state next door, it’s not allowed. You’ll need to make a case why AO3 should be either refusing stories about legal marriages or allowing what some places consider incest.)
I absolutely do not believe AO3 is going to implement content restrictions based on a request like this. But maybe if people come up with a list of standards they want - someone else will volunteer to host an AO3-shaped archive for them, with the rules they want.
AO3 was designed for the stuff a LOT of people found offensive. Now that it’s gotten big and popular with more mainstream readers, it’s not going to change its focus.
AO3 is not founded on venture capitalism; it does not need to appeal to the most readers.
AO3’s reason for not “moderating” the content OP thinks doesn’t belong there, is “AO3 was CREATED to host that content.”
AO3 is not and has never been a democracy; the rules were not decided by polling fandom about what content they wanted to allow. AO3 was made by a pack of people who had a very specific vision about what they wanted (fanfic, including stuff that any reasonable person would kind offensive) and what they didn’t (commercial links of any sort). AO3 continues because that vision is sharable and new people have agreed that’s what the archive should be.
If you don’t like AO3’s rules, you don’t have to use the archive.