Except that these fanfictions are just that, fiction

I don't think this is a good argument. Fiction can make individuals do powerful things. Ideas can make people do things, move them to collective action, try and change the world, radically reframe the way you see things. I wouldn't be here, if I hadn't dedicated some part of my life reading Marxist theory AND encountering the very same things Marx talked about, in my daily professional life. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't read Those who walk away from omelas and been moved to tears by the allegory of a badly beaten, neglected, abused, and malnourished little kid. So to say that fiction is just fiction, it's not giving it its due credit.

So yeah, my default is “ostracize anyone who makes that shit” because otaku shit is what comes to mind… but it’s not as if everyone making stuff with that content is doing it out of enjoyment or endorsement

If someone wanted to write a story about comfort women, should it be banned for realistically and unflinchingly depicting the rape of minors by Japanese soldiers? (Damn, Shinzo Abe would love that)

I definitely agree with you. What subjects are taboo and what subjects are allowed is something that deserves constant, transparent, and public discussion. It made me think of Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison. There are depictions of sex that are consensual, and there are also depictions of prostitution, and sexual violence, domestic abuse, etc that broke my fucking heart. By China's own restrictions it is too negative and violating of social mores to put out into the world.

Point here is that it’s easy to look at the worst of the worst and think “ban this sick filth” when the reality of it is that mainstream society is pushing this shit (child beauty pageants, Roy Moore apologism, targeted hypersexualization of teenage celebrities, ordinary romance novels, etc.), and sending moderators to comb through millions of works to figure out who’s getting off on it and who isn’t is impossible, and if anything, will make people just stop putting warnings on their fanfics

I think this is what came first the chicken or the egg. People write hypersexualized content because we live in a hypersexualized society. I think the Communist party is fighting a multi-pronged cultural fight here, video game addictions, burnout in students, pornography, etc. Will this have the desired effect? I don't know, but they are certainly trying to do something; part of me feels like America doesn't do anything about the worst excesses and violations of the human spirit. And in our society, they will gleefully peddle you porn, queer or otherwise, and hide behind it while sickos go on to write pedophilic fantasies that groom tweens with inappropriate access to the internet.

At the end of the day, it’s easy to get mad about made up stuff on the Internet because it’s easy, but there’s brutality right in front of your face in the real world that’s better of being faced down instead

I think because a lot of people have grown up on the horrible American internet, we have become de-sensitized to it. But I've seen a man's distended anus (GOATSE). Unwanted and involuntary pornography. Hate crimes. Death. Violence against Children. This is all incredibly traumatic shit that we grow up and we don't even really talk about it. Or we talk about it in jest. Like "yeah I grew up in 4chan where pedophiles constantly tried to groom kids and post loli" and we act like that doesn't do something to you as a person. We gotta think of what sacrifices we are making, morally and culturally to allow for a "free speech internet" and lately, a part of me feels less moved by the idea of free and unregulated internet, or at least, more specifically, free and unregulated internet spaces, where filth is allowed to mingle and entangle with content you'd like to see. And that content is used to hold a lot of people "hostage" to the idea that it's either-or. And refuse to demand the fact we deserve better.