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Thanks to everyone who joined today, whether in person and online for our APrIGF panel on digital safety and censorship. Mish Pony was unable to join us, but Jeremy Malcolm, Dr K S Park, and Shambhawi Paudel led a vital hour. Key takeaways 🧵

The ontological boundary matters. Laws meant to protect are instead targeting victimless fiction. Jeremy cited Lauren Mastrosa, a novelist imprisoned under real-abuse statutes despite no actual child appearing in her book.

In the UK, prosecutions over fictional material are rising while real-case prosecutions fall. Crucially, research (like Nottingham Trent's) reveals no causal link between consuming fiction and real-world offending.

The regional chilling effect is profound. In China, authors on AO3-adjacent sites face 12-year sentences for fiction. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s pending Broadcasting Bill would explicitly ban LGBTQ+ content across broadcast and digital platforms.