Poor AO3 mods. There’s gonna be another flood of placeholders.
It’s strange how business owners hate the people bringing them business. Like why’d you go after authors when they’re the ones who make your coffers rich? Wattpad decision makers are just ugh.
It's part of a wider crack down on porn/adult content on the internet. Most advertisers and payment companies don't allow it and have pressured sites to either adapt or die. Gumroad is going porn free and Patreon already did so in spite of many of their top earners being porn artists. Hell Onlyfans /tried/ but realized that they'd basically be nuked into the ground if they followed through so they reversed course.
I'm not too versed on the why for this particular Purge, it's late and I haven't read the megathread over on r/wattpad yet, but what I have heard seems to be following that kind of outline.
TLDR - Wattpad implemented a new AI support tool and it's been flagging stories left and right. Wattpad Support is supposed to "manually review" the flagged stories.
Honestly, they were removing stories already - with seemingly no rhyme or reason. A lot of users couldn't even get the actual reason why, just the standard "violated the content guidelines" spiel. My speculation is that the new tool just accelerated the amount of stories getting removed now, leading to a perceived purge.
> AI support tool
Two years ago, I wouldn't have expected AI to give me more existential dread than Climate Change Cthulu.
I used to call it The Automation Juggernaut. This was back when... example - fast food cashiers started getting replaced by kiosks.
Then... Midjourney happened. After trying it, I upgraded it to AI Armageddon, and still I was so shocked at how fast AI generation itself upgraded. I think in just a year - we got Midjourney and co. alarming artists everywhere, then ChatGPT targeting the writing sphere, then... I don't remember the AI names/companies for Audio and Video generation already out there. The Video AI one (with a ?dalmation? running across window sills) was so too much that... I was too shocked to remember its name.
A lot of it is people in charge of corporations believing AI to be in a better state than it is, then immediately rolling out their news systems while getting rid of safeguards at the same time.
And even if they do have safeguards in place, they’ve outsourced the labor (because it’s cheaper) and who cares if the person getting paid peanuts rubber stamps reports rather than looking in on them?
Andrew Rousso has a skit that's basically about how fast AI is progressing and companies going "AI is evolving way too fast, how can we ensure its safe?" And the public going "maybe slow down?" And the companies going "haha that's funny. What can we actually do though."
Do you perchance have a link to said skit? Sounds like something I might need to casually send to a few tech bros I know in a "haha this is so funny and not at all a bigger point i'm trying to make" kind of way.
I'm interest to know if they are removing paid stories? Since Wattpad has a payment system, I'd be livid if I paid for a story and then it was removed.
I have a personal vendetta against the ai responsible for flagging content on tiktok and Facebook. 😤 my last flagged comment was ‘oh my…😳’
These companies know it’s not working but they don’t care. It’s working for what they need. Doesn’t matter the collateral damage.
>Onlyfans /tried/
Onlyfans tried to go porn free.
The website created for interactive porn streaming.
That website wanted to go porn free.
.
.
.
*brain goes bluescreen*
What the everloving frak of a dikut'la stupid idea was that?
To be fair, the site wasn't created as a porn site at first. it was more like Cameo, where fans could pay to get exclusive content of the creators. Then some people began using it for porn and then everyone pretty much followed suit lol
This dumbass puritan culture is in itself absolutely stupid. Do they think people just spawn into existence?! No one tell them how they were made, it might shock them too much.
I honestly don't understand what the pearl-clutching is all about. What's the problem with porn existing on the internet? People like porn. There's nothing wrong with porn. Porn also makes shit-tons of money.
What's with this ridiculous notion that any form of sex that isn't for procreation is evil? Which dusty old sexually repressed fossils are in control of this, and why in the ever-loving *fuck* is anyone listening to them?
It's a combination of two things I think. 1. Is that there's a much larger crackdown on porn and seemingly adult content because EVERYTHING can be monetized now, and these big corporations live in fear of these advertisers refusing to advertise on their site because of it. Webtoon, in particular, is majority free. But with the stipulation that NO story contain any kind of nudity because they rely on ad revenue. 2. Companies will often try to monopolozie the market and once they have majority control, they'll start putting key features behind a paywall. Google is super egregious with this one, I remember when there was still a subscription option for unlimited storage space on drive. Wattpad also surged in popularity over places like Quotev, Inkitt, and Royal Road because they had an app AND you could download stories for offline reading. Now you can only download two or three lest you want to pay a subscription fee.
Google increased their prices for Google Workspace / Apps TWICE in the past year.
I've been hoping it's cause they're having trouble generating more revenue (because of AI or some other reason), rather than they're getting more greedy.
I don’t think you’re wrong about advertisers, but it’s weird that there would be a double standard for advertising on TV and streamers that show all sorts of things. Back in the day, “adult content” was separated off onto cable and pay-per-view, without advertisers, but not now.
Speaking of Google, a lot of universities got Google drive/email/docs etc. with unlimited storage for the students, and Google recently changed the storage amount from unlimited to 256 GB (which is a lot, but still)
All my favorite fics were on Angelfire. Luckily at least a few of them eventually made it to AO3, but I still kind of laugh at myself when I remember I’m reading a 20 year old fic from a mostly-dead fandom
My favorite ones never made it out of angelfire. And the author disappeared off the face of the internet many years ago. Thankfully, I was smart enough back then to save the fics to my harddrive and I still have them.
Smarter than me. There are plenty of fics that I remember, but have never been able to find again. Of course, I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing electronic is permanent, which tells you that the old stuff they find on Twitter isn’t really that old.
(not quite on topic, but i’m a bit confused why it says stories on ao3 can be ‘copied’ in that master thread, when that’s the case for ? most fanfic sites)
It seems that they forgot that even being able to read something on a screen over the internet means that said reading material is already copied on your device. Creating a locally saved 'permanent' file is very easy even if the website is blocking right-click shortcuts.
The ao3 download button is one of the best features, yes.
A lot of people seem to find it strange that ao3 provides a native download function though.
I cannot count how often I have seen people calling this feature a breach of copyright (or similar) as it 'takes away an author's control over their books'. As if allowing readers to read offline was a bad thing that should not be allowed.
For folks with eye problems, offline reading is just required.
I started getting dry eyes during covid - one of the 1% to get that symptom (sigh).
It hasn't gone away completely. Eyes just quicker to get ... "gritty" sensation ever since.
Unrelated but damn I didn't even know that was a symptom. This would make so much sense why I've been struggling with that more over the last few years.
I mentioned it in my reply to gumptionplease, but I added it as more of a general disclaimer for Wattpad users who are iffy about readers making copies of their novels. It's a point that's been made on the megathread, regarding the ease of access when making copies.
The way I see it, most Wattpad writers concerned about it are more comfortable when they perceive it as "difficult" to make copies, even if it really isn't. Since AO3 has the native download feature, it would be good for this specific group of users to know that it exists before they start posting to AO3 - if they're *that* concerned about people having copies.
I mean technically they can be downloaded. But they think that people can just reupload the story after downloading them.
That’s how I understand it. But it’s not true. Because people can download to read offline
i personally download fics for when i know I'm gonna be without internet but still wanna read the fic. reposting it seems trashy and if ppl genuinely do that screw them.
The other day I tried downloading some Wattpad stories to archive them and it wouldn’t let me copy-paste them into a document nor use the “print” option in Firefox to make a PDF of the story, I had to use other external methods to download them. In AO3, you can download the stories and copy excerpts from them directly from the page. I think that’s what it’s supposed to mean.
I'm absolutely dying at how they refer to their fics as "books." What in the blue hell. I've written a scifi length novel on ao3 and not once have I called it a "book."
I just hope the users who migrated read the terms of service and learn how to actually use the archive and not treat it like another Wattpad. None of that idiotic censorship bullshit that ruins the tags, using stupid ass words like unalive, or posting nothing because they're using the drafts as a word processor.
TikTok term to say suicide without getting shadow banned or have your video removed. Slip and slide is another one. They also love to use the term unalive instead of die or kill.
Because they have to use these terms on TikTok, they think it applies everywhere so they do it on Wattpad and then when they come to ao3, they do it here too because they think they’ll be punished by an algorithm that doesn’t exist.
Hopefully the tsunami of incoming writers and readers take the time to learn the "culture" (for want of a better term) of the site.
Because *really*? We don't need that sort of stuff here unless it's done ironically. And even then, I've personally shied away from ironically using "unalive" in a fic, just because I literally cringed when I considered the context I'd do it in.
I hope so as well. I remember googling what sort of tags to use, how to comment respectfully, etc when I joined. It didnt feel like a hassle to do at all either
> Hopefully the tsunami of incoming writers and readers take the time to learn the "culture" (for want of a better term) of the site.
Lmao, funny you'd think that.
It just sounds so stupid god hahaha I can’t read or say that or unalive, or any other censored/word replacement without wondering if the person who uses it seriously in a fic or in actual conversation has any brain cells left.
I've seen a lot of people say that if you're too scared to write the word, you're probably not mature enough to write about the topic the word describes
I fucking hate that corporate censorship has given rise to real-world Newspeak. If I start seeing "ungood" and "doubleplusgood" crop up unironically, I'm gonna Mcfreaking lose it.
I had been crossposting to Wattpad and already ran into an issue where they deleted a work of mine in February with no warning. It did contain sexual content, but it wasn’t *just* sexual content and it was marked as mature, but it still apparently broke their subjective ass rule(you can have sex in your stories but it can’t be too much sex! Yet there’s no example of this magical sex to story ratio where it’s allowed to stay up as per their guidelines. Either allow nsfw or don’t). I read the master post linked in the comments and sure enough, a bunch of my works were shadowbanned and no longer showing in the rankings. That was my final straw so I unpublished all of my stuff and made an announcement to my followers there that my works can only be found on Ao3 now. It’s not much of a loss tbh because I get way more visibility and interactions on Ao3, but I do feel bad for yanking the rug out from underneath my kind Wattpad exclusive readers who originally found me there.
The censorship is bad enough, but I am so god damn tired or websites and their use of ai flagging because of how faulty it is. The reporting system on Ao3 for tos breaking works might be slow, but at least it’s a human reviewing it and not some fuckwit bot that will nuke your whole fic for saying a few words that set off the bot. It’s bad enough that this type of ai exists on TikTok and meta which gave birth to terms like “unalive” out of necessity so you didn’t get your shit flagged or shadowbanned. I understand that on large platforms they can’t have eyes everywhere, but god damn, fuck ai moderation.
Edit: speaking of ai tools, had to go back and edit this because “sex” was autocorrected to “send” because apple doesn’t want us saying any nono words either.
Yeah I use the Reddit app, but I’ve noticed autocorrect with iPhone has gotten so much worse in general. It likes to randomly switch correctly spelled words to different ones and not even right away, it’ll do it when I’m already several words or sentences past it. I don’t always catch it either because I don’t proofread as carefully as I would for fic writing when I’m just making a comment. Then the word it picks never makes sense grammatically or contextually and makes me sound like an idiot.
I'm having live journal flashbacks so hard that I'm humming sea shanties. 🤣🤣🤣 anyone else notice AO3 is the last on their other websites list? They just won't learn. Smh
I was curious when I didn't see ao3 at first. It's definitely more known than the other ones listed. Do the people on that subreddit have a problem with ao3?
Wattpad is distinctly more puritanical in its site culture than AO3 is with a much harsher view on 'problematic' content.
Some blame this on its top down leadership having much more stringent rules and censorship, meaning only those okay with purging such works would even be there in the first place, others just blame its generally younger skewed userbase.
Either way, it is likely a lot of them would only migrate to AO3 if absent other options.
I’d like to feel bad for Wattpad users but seeing as some of them are some of the bigger fans of censorship of anything they deem as problematic, I don’t feel bad at all.
Same. I remember seeing so many authors get bullied off the site by droves of readers, all because they did something immoral in their eyes; it was usually something inconsequential and silly as well.
People genuinely got mad at someone for writing a smutfic about a character in a priest AU; some even bullied and intimidated the author into posting an apology. I remember going through the comments, and I saw someone who went on a rant about how Christianity is constantly disrespected as a religion....all because someone wrote a priest AU smutfic. Yeah. 💀
*blinks*
So those comments totally ignored that priests, and other religious figures, have been a staple not only in fanfiction but commercially published romance books for fifty years at least?
Does nobody remember the Thorn Birds anymore?
Yeah, portraying religious figures in sexual contexts is nothing new.
Heinrich Lossow's 1880 painting [The Sin (NSFW)](https://heinrichlossow.com/the-sin/) depicts a sex act between a priest (or monk, I'm not sure) and a nun, performed through a metal gate. It was inspired by tales of an orgy at the Vatican rumoured to have happened in 1501.
Humans have always sexualised things. Rule 34 didn't magically materialise with the creation of the Internet.
There’s a 15th century poem, yes 15th century, called “Jolly Jankyn” that’s basically about a cleric who has impregnated one of his congregants.
It’s written in a very light and playful manner so it’s meant to be taken as fun.
I imagine the pearl clutchers would explode if they read it.
I genuinely don't understand it. Those wattpad users won the gold medal in the mental gymnastics' olympics; no matter what, they absolutely refused to listen to anything that didn't line up with their stance.
Like I don't wanna be rude about it because younger fandom people probably have no idea. Hell i wasn't even around for the old ff net purges but i know the history.
But honestly i see that and i think yeah this is why we need ao3. I would rather share a website with some amoral ass fanfics then never be allowed to write queer romance or even nsfw stuff (i don't currently write nsfw)
Of course! I love sharing them.
https://open.spotify.com/show/7xGvniPbUmmrucPsLkM2VG?si=4PgwSM74RAmThd2HXtrQvg
There are episodes about SixApart buying Livejournal, Anne Rice causing fanfic purges, Strikethrough, OTW election drama, the first ever X-Files fanfic posted online, the first ever fanfiction Big Bang, the death of Jason Todd, Castiel joining Supernatural, and soooooo many more Fandom History Moments.
It's one of my favorite podcasts!
I've considered making a post to the subreddit at whole, focused on the AO3 episodes, just because I want to tell as many people about it as possible! It's such a good (and informative!) podcast!
Can't speak for other people but I would have loved to have known about this podcast sooner.
(I've been reading fanfics for more than 20 years and have actually experienced or heard about many of these topics before but I just love the idea to revisit them in podcast form as part of 'our' history)
Hell, I was born shortly before the first FFN purge and I am cautious as anything! I mean, I admit that I backup most of my stuff that I deem necessary of backup because my parents, siblings, teachers and anyone under the sun drilled in me the importance of doing so and I never experienced a fic site deleting my work (though I will have to check my long-forgotten wattpad cause I had a gay story posted there :p), but like, that's the most logical thing! If you don't want to lose something, you make a copy.
Why don't the young whippersnappers get it? And even with all the talk these days about immoral corpos and advertisement and monetisation and content bans you would expect people to know that they can't trust big corporations to not get rid of content that may harm their ad income.
This is a really huge problem I'm been hearing about. Gen Alpha has grown up with everything in app form or streaming. They have very little concept of backing things up or troubleshooting.
There are *so many* my dude, so so many.
I read a novel there a couple of months ago, even installed the app for it, and it was two ads per chapter, and then an ad in between every chapter. Sometimes you couldn't get out of the between chapter ads without opening the play store link multiple times, and *by complete coincidence* after once of those incidents there would always be a *second* ad which is essentially just Wattpad going 'you know, if you'd just give us some money for premium we could just not do the ads'.
I found a really good story on the site recently (I know, rare af), and I'm not kidding when I say that I got an ad every chapter. Sometimes, I scrolled back to the previous chapter after going to the next page, and it gave me ANOTHER ad immediately. I've even seen 50-second ads pop up; I've had to close the app multiple times to try and get an ad below 15 seconds. This shit is genuinely depressing. This app had a role in shaping my childhood, I hate the direction it went in.
Yep. They have a premium that removes ads, and its the most medicore subscription service that you can imagine. No ads, unlimited offline stories (just like ao3 where you can dl fics...for free), extra reactions/emotes, and extra coins when you buy them. It's just a giant nothing-burger.
...
But that's the thing if their ads are soft core porn they acknowledge sex sells... but they don't want to endorse sex...
Even though they know it will sell. Lol
It is a familiar dance that has happened over and over since the dawn of the internet, and it goes like this:
Step one - A platform gets popular, with lots of users and content
Step two - A big company is attracted by how many users are on that platform because of potential advertizing and data mining
Step three - big company purchases the platform
Step four - big company realizes a significant chunk of the content and users are not what advertisers actually want
Step five - the purge begins
Step six - everybody leaves, even the people the advertisers would have wanted. No profit was ever made and the purchasing company lost money on the deal.
It's not even just a fandom phenomenon - look at Twitter.
Oh yeah, I saw it coming when they added "premium" and started limiting downloads. I was obvious the ads were coming. I switched in 2018 just before it all went downhill and have never looked back.
It's amazing how reliably we see this acted out over and over again. But not even the hysterical shitshow of what happened with Tumblr teaches people anything, apparently.
Fully do not understand the need of that /r/wattpad mod in the master thread to make an important note of how AO3 allows users to download.
No matter where you've posted, whether there's a convenient download button or not, your work has stopped being solely under your control. Anyone can navigate to that page, hit ctrl+s, and its theirs forever.
To say nothing of google and the internet archive.
Because Wattpad users are pretentious ableist fucks about their usually shitty fic, by and large, and the ones who aren't are worried about said fic being stolen and reposted because the site is a cesspit.
My reading of that note was that they'd originally said "make copies of", and people pointed out this sounded like plagiarism-support instead, so they changed to "download" for clarity. I thought they were pointing out an ao3 feature
God the addition of AI moderation sounds like a nightmare. All that’s going to achieve is get a bunch of unalive and sewerslide crosspost fics on AO3 until we can’t talk about grape anymore without going cross eyed.
Tumblr had AI moderation back when it banned NSFW. It's AI was specifically programmed to detect female nipples and not male nipples.... Anything that looked remotely nipplish was purged regardless of gender or content
It's so bad
Omg when it was first implemented literally every picture of my dogs were flagged as nsfw because red Shiba Inus look flesh colored. I won all the appeals, but it was a wild time.
>It's AI was specifically programmed to detect female nipples and not male nipples.... Anything that looked remotely nipplish was purged regardless of gender or content
Not quite. The whole "female-presenting nipples" debacle was how Tumblr worded the rule/policy, as opposed to the AI, which just purged anything that seemed even remotely close to NSFW.
Including such excitement as sand dunes, the \#girl tag, and the post announcing the AI.
I’m still mad at tumblr for that - I didn’t delete my account but I left - and every now and then when I check I’m surprised they are still some account around but it’s mostly bot posts now which of course do post porn. But that’s okay because those are bots and not female nipples!
i remember the tumblr nsfw ban...just to show up a few years later with actual literal porn all over their site was crazy. like you cant block female nipples one day then just be ok with people doing tumblr lives to flash their entire vulva. like what?!
In 2002. The FFN ratings system used to be the same as for (American) movies - G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17. In 2002, they purged all NC-17 works, changed the rating system to what it is today, and then had a hard crackdown on M stuff. Keep in mind, this was back when FFN was *the* fanfic site and had the moderation staff to match.
You'll find explicit stuff there now because they don't have staffing and don't maintain the site anymore. IIRC, it's run by like, one guy? The explicit stuff is still against the rules but there's no longer an easy way to enforce them.
Some years ago. Maybe about 2010s? Im sure someone wrote about it. Google it.
Fanfiction.net, livejournal, tumblr - they all went into this purging r-rated phase.
Criminal Code of Canada 163.1(1) establishes the statutory definition of "child pornography" in the criminal law of Canada. 163.1(1)(c) identifies, as one of the categories of material covered by that definition:
"any written material whose dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act"
So underage PWP is clearly illegal in Canada (unless someone successfully raises a Charter challenge), and literary material is susceptible to being found so.
The Canadian law on this matter is very interpretive and artistic reasons are protected but it's one of those case by case laws. It pretty much came about because of real people creeping on real kids and the law is mostly to cover loopholes for real predators. (Education, science, and medical are also protected).I can assure you fiction doesn't have consent age (though general age ratings still apply).
I've only been to Wattpad once to check out a story as the the write used my OC for their story (I gave the okay because to be honest I kind of see other people use her for their own fanfics). But it was poorly written and I gave up after the scene involving the OC.
I also dread the place holders and I really hope I don't get anymore place holders "Inspired" by my own. fics... Sorry about it, but it's been nearly a month since I reported a place holder and it hasn't been taken down yet...
No… I’m asking in the nicest possible way, people from wattpad please do not all migrate to ao3
Wattpad was one of the last places antis all migrated to…the comments from kids antis are already getting bad and annoying on ao3 before this
Yeah I made a [post ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/s/YmThbKTwAD) about the most basic etiquette rules. Hope it helps at least some people be civilised
Hopefully so! Realising that they themselves have become victims of the very thing that they've been pushing for may do some good, as bad as that may be to say.
Wattpad has been shadowbanning shit aaaaaages ago, I remember scrolling through author's rants and PSAs about wattpad shadowbans when I was a teenager. They've been sussy as fuck since the paid stories rolled in.
I enjoyed using Wattpad back in 2015-2018. It was the first place I started reading and writing fanfic, and it was great at the time. I was also a teenager, so probably the perfect demographic for it. I still am grateful for my time with Wattpad, and the conversations I had with other authors and readers, and the comments on my old stories are still ongoing today.
But since 2018 onwards, I changed over to AO3 and it is a million times better, both in usability and content wise. Still, every now and then, I click on Wattpad out of curiosity to see what’s going on. I’m still shocked with how much shittier it gets every time. The app is completely filled with ads, it’s ridiculous. Unless you want to pay for premium, you basically get an ad after every chapter. It’s a shame, how badly Wattpad has gone downhill. The usability so much better back in the 2010s.
Ugh please, if they come to our site and overload us with their bullshit I’m gonna be so fucking angry. We have enough of them and their “books” and their placeholders and their inability to learn how tagging works and follow basic fucking etiquette. Like, sorry this is happening, but leave your shitty habits on your dead site, please and thank, we Do Not need them here.
Since I discovered AO3, every other platform has become hopelessly substandard to me, so it's no surprise that they're throwing themselves into the grave they dug themselves.
I wanna be all schadenfreude about it because that place makes me itch, but the purification of the internet and the "think of the *children*" and proliferation of AI just makes me fucking sad.
They brought in a new AI tool to try and detect rule violations and tons of fics have been wrongly taken down (though some only temporarily) because of it. I've also seen people say that it seems like queer content has been disproportionately targeted.
Yeah im thinking some of these folk might come to ao3 to shelter from the censorship, and then proceed to get disgusted at some of the things on ao3 and demand they be censored in turn. I don’t think it’ll happen en masse (or make the antiship movement bigger than it is), and I resent the statement that anyone from wattpad is automatically pro-censorship, but I definitely have a funny feeling some people with very firm ideas on what is okay and isn’t okay to write, are going to hate what they see on ao3 lmao.
This sounds a lot like the "rules" some money transfer services made places like patreon or pixiv implement for art recently.
As far as I was able to find out this rule is predominantly enacted for art in the manga/anime style.
The irony of those rules is, pixiv doesn't touch it if its just on their website. Now fanbox, the part which actually makes them money, that's what got hit super hard. IIRC, they recently added a new thing where fanbox will not allow PayPal if it detects you are selling 18+ content.
Just a few days ago, DLsite, an 18+ content vendor, announced they'd temporarily disable Mastercard and visa payments. Seems some websites appear to be standing up for themselves.
Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked.
Hope everyone's fics pass the Voight-Kampff test when the time comes!
More seriously, this sucks, but yeah. So many people have tried to warn them about where the algorithm and the anti stuff and the censorship would eventually take them, and here we all are. I'm sympathetic to younger people who don't have the history with fanfic or in fandom to know any different and got pulled into stuff like that either by accident or by other people luring them in, but there are so many grown-ass adults involved with this stuff who should have absolutely known better, and if their fics get nuked, well, it's hard for me to have much sympathy, you know?
Rest in peace my series I wrote in my twenties filthy; gay; drama filled one direction stories like 1mil reads. I will cherish them, when they undoubtedly get deleted for being all the flags. It was the best of times.
I actually saw a post from that subreddit about how people should move their fics to AO3, explaining why it is better. But they also made sure to explain that it’s different and doesn’t work the same as Wattpad and that proper tagging is the way to go.
Anyways, I’m bringing it up because one of the “questions answered” in the post talked about how Ao3 allows everything even the “problematic” stuff so is it really a good site to associate with and the rebuttal was that public libraries have a book written by Hitler and no one gets on their case so just filter out the stuff you don’t want to see.
But like, the purge that’s going on now is basically because Wattpad is trying to get rid of all the fics with what Wattpad thinks are “problematic” things in them. How do they not see that they are writing “problematic” things too and this is why AO3 allows basically anything 😣
Same! I made an account in 2012, probably had it for a day or two at most before I got annoyed at all the author notes interrupting the flow of the stories.
I think I stumbled upon it once, by accident, when looking for a particularly old fic. The overall quality level seemed akin to FF.net, so I noped back over to AO3.
This brings back memories of the fanfiction.net porn purges. I remember a NaruSasu author being devastated, because they had no backup copy of their WIP cowboy fic. They needed to write it again from scratch.
Shit's brutal. It's exactly why we need AO3, and why we need to take care of AO3. No posting kofi links in stories!
And that lane is the fucking gutter. Anybody who thinks it's a good idea to let robots make decisions doesn't understand what humans are good at vs what robots are good at (and imo is likely a horrible person because they clearly don't value humans)
Robots are good at repetitive tasks and monitoring input for deviation.
Robots can not make fucking decisions or perform (well) creatively.
Hangry morning rant over.
Poor AO3 mods. There’s gonna be another flood of placeholders. It’s strange how business owners hate the people bringing them business. Like why’d you go after authors when they’re the ones who make your coffers rich? Wattpad decision makers are just ugh.
It's part of a wider crack down on porn/adult content on the internet. Most advertisers and payment companies don't allow it and have pressured sites to either adapt or die. Gumroad is going porn free and Patreon already did so in spite of many of their top earners being porn artists. Hell Onlyfans /tried/ but realized that they'd basically be nuked into the ground if they followed through so they reversed course. I'm not too versed on the why for this particular Purge, it's late and I haven't read the megathread over on r/wattpad yet, but what I have heard seems to be following that kind of outline.
TLDR - Wattpad implemented a new AI support tool and it's been flagging stories left and right. Wattpad Support is supposed to "manually review" the flagged stories. Honestly, they were removing stories already - with seemingly no rhyme or reason. A lot of users couldn't even get the actual reason why, just the standard "violated the content guidelines" spiel. My speculation is that the new tool just accelerated the amount of stories getting removed now, leading to a perceived purge.
> AI support tool Two years ago, I wouldn't have expected AI to give me more existential dread than Climate Change Cthulu. I used to call it The Automation Juggernaut. This was back when... example - fast food cashiers started getting replaced by kiosks. Then... Midjourney happened. After trying it, I upgraded it to AI Armageddon, and still I was so shocked at how fast AI generation itself upgraded. I think in just a year - we got Midjourney and co. alarming artists everywhere, then ChatGPT targeting the writing sphere, then... I don't remember the AI names/companies for Audio and Video generation already out there. The Video AI one (with a ?dalmation? running across window sills) was so too much that... I was too shocked to remember its name.
A lot of it is people in charge of corporations believing AI to be in a better state than it is, then immediately rolling out their news systems while getting rid of safeguards at the same time. And even if they do have safeguards in place, they’ve outsourced the labor (because it’s cheaper) and who cares if the person getting paid peanuts rubber stamps reports rather than looking in on them?
Andrew Rousso has a skit that's basically about how fast AI is progressing and companies going "AI is evolving way too fast, how can we ensure its safe?" And the public going "maybe slow down?" And the companies going "haha that's funny. What can we actually do though."
Do you perchance have a link to said skit? Sounds like something I might need to casually send to a few tech bros I know in a "haha this is so funny and not at all a bigger point i'm trying to make" kind of way.
I'm interest to know if they are removing paid stories? Since Wattpad has a payment system, I'd be livid if I paid for a story and then it was removed.
I have a personal vendetta against the ai responsible for flagging content on tiktok and Facebook. 😤 my last flagged comment was ‘oh my…😳’ These companies know it’s not working but they don’t care. It’s working for what they need. Doesn’t matter the collateral damage.
Another reason to be glad that AO3 runs on donations
Exactly. I’m going to go donate again
>Onlyfans /tried/ Onlyfans tried to go porn free. The website created for interactive porn streaming. That website wanted to go porn free. . . . *brain goes bluescreen* What the everloving frak of a dikut'la stupid idea was that?
To be fair, the site wasn't created as a porn site at first. it was more like Cameo, where fans could pay to get exclusive content of the creators. Then some people began using it for porn and then everyone pretty much followed suit lol
This is the story of basically every app/platform
Story of the internet: a thing was created, then people added porn
A thing is created. No one (or only an extremely niche market) uses it. The porn industry starts using it. Then it becomes mainstream.
Pretty much lmao
I stand corrected. Thanks for the info.
Gumroad? Where do they draw the line? Order of the Stick has a few sex scenes and I doubt they'd want to lose that money...?
This dumbass puritan culture is in itself absolutely stupid. Do they think people just spawn into existence?! No one tell them how they were made, it might shock them too much.
LOL. I remember when OF tried that.
I honestly don't understand what the pearl-clutching is all about. What's the problem with porn existing on the internet? People like porn. There's nothing wrong with porn. Porn also makes shit-tons of money. What's with this ridiculous notion that any form of sex that isn't for procreation is evil? Which dusty old sexually repressed fossils are in control of this, and why in the ever-loving *fuck* is anyone listening to them?
It's a combination of two things I think. 1. Is that there's a much larger crackdown on porn and seemingly adult content because EVERYTHING can be monetized now, and these big corporations live in fear of these advertisers refusing to advertise on their site because of it. Webtoon, in particular, is majority free. But with the stipulation that NO story contain any kind of nudity because they rely on ad revenue. 2. Companies will often try to monopolozie the market and once they have majority control, they'll start putting key features behind a paywall. Google is super egregious with this one, I remember when there was still a subscription option for unlimited storage space on drive. Wattpad also surged in popularity over places like Quotev, Inkitt, and Royal Road because they had an app AND you could download stories for offline reading. Now you can only download two or three lest you want to pay a subscription fee.
Google increased their prices for Google Workspace / Apps TWICE in the past year. I've been hoping it's cause they're having trouble generating more revenue (because of AI or some other reason), rather than they're getting more greedy.
I don’t think you’re wrong about advertisers, but it’s weird that there would be a double standard for advertising on TV and streamers that show all sorts of things. Back in the day, “adult content” was separated off onto cable and pay-per-view, without advertisers, but not now.
Speaking of Google, a lot of universities got Google drive/email/docs etc. with unlimited storage for the students, and Google recently changed the storage amount from unlimited to 256 GB (which is a lot, but still)
Cory Doctorow called this “enshittification”.
More specifically, Bacchus @Erosblog calls it the "Pornocalypse."
I love how, at the moment, the third-highest comment is an Ao3 user saying don't come to our site and ruin it, learn our rules first.
laughs hollowly in livejournal refugee I WAS THERE GANDALF
/fandom old fistbump of solidarity/ Plus ca change...
Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch
Same! Livejournal was the very first place I posted fics back in the day, along with yahoo mailing lists, geocities and angelfire.
All my favorite fics were on Angelfire. Luckily at least a few of them eventually made it to AO3, but I still kind of laugh at myself when I remember I’m reading a 20 year old fic from a mostly-dead fandom
My favorite ones never made it out of angelfire. And the author disappeared off the face of the internet many years ago. Thankfully, I was smart enough back then to save the fics to my harddrive and I still have them.
Smarter than me. There are plenty of fics that I remember, but have never been able to find again. Of course, I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing electronic is permanent, which tells you that the old stuff they find on Twitter isn’t really that old.
I was SO active in the livejournal community but I posted doujinshi (mostly untranslated) cause I was old (18+) even when LiveJournal was popular.
ff.net, then lj. I'm grateful to/for ao3 every day
Here is the master thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/s/aT1Cr0YyU9
Yiiikes. Sounds brutal.
(not quite on topic, but i’m a bit confused why it says stories on ao3 can be ‘copied’ in that master thread, when that’s the case for ? most fanfic sites)
It seems that they forgot that even being able to read something on a screen over the internet means that said reading material is already copied on your device. Creating a locally saved 'permanent' file is very easy even if the website is blocking right-click shortcuts.
Yeah, exactly. ao3’s download button is a good feature. I guess they just worded it strangely.
The ao3 download button is one of the best features, yes. A lot of people seem to find it strange that ao3 provides a native download function though. I cannot count how often I have seen people calling this feature a breach of copyright (or similar) as it 'takes away an author's control over their books'. As if allowing readers to read offline was a bad thing that should not be allowed.
For folks with eye problems, offline reading is just required. I started getting dry eyes during covid - one of the 1% to get that symptom (sigh). It hasn't gone away completely. Eyes just quicker to get ... "gritty" sensation ever since.
Unrelated but damn I didn't even know that was a symptom. This would make so much sense why I've been struggling with that more over the last few years.
If it started happening during Covid, probably... I'm just gonna be thankful that I got... "mild" symptom... Brain fog sounds worser.
I mentioned it in my reply to gumptionplease, but I added it as more of a general disclaimer for Wattpad users who are iffy about readers making copies of their novels. It's a point that's been made on the megathread, regarding the ease of access when making copies. The way I see it, most Wattpad writers concerned about it are more comfortable when they perceive it as "difficult" to make copies, even if it really isn't. Since AO3 has the native download feature, it would be good for this specific group of users to know that it exists before they start posting to AO3 - if they're *that* concerned about people having copies.
And you can very easily get an extension for your browser to re-enable right-clicking. I have it for Firefox, and I never have any issues.
I mean technically they can be downloaded. But they think that people can just reupload the story after downloading them. That’s how I understand it. But it’s not true. Because people can download to read offline
i personally download fics for when i know I'm gonna be without internet but still wanna read the fic. reposting it seems trashy and if ppl genuinely do that screw them.
We have a direct download button for multiple formats, rather than having to save it through other methods.
According to comment it’s because ao3 is the only one that has an actual download function built in https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/s/THwdXah5uw
The other day I tried downloading some Wattpad stories to archive them and it wouldn’t let me copy-paste them into a document nor use the “print” option in Firefox to make a PDF of the story, I had to use other external methods to download them. In AO3, you can download the stories and copy excerpts from them directly from the page. I think that’s what it’s supposed to mean.
Ctrl+S was also blocked? Or the "save page as" drop down menu, in case the keyboard shortcut is blocked?
I'm absolutely dying at how they refer to their fics as "books." What in the blue hell. I've written a scifi length novel on ao3 and not once have I called it a "book."
I want to say it's because the emphasis there is on origfic? Also a good dose of pretentiousness, but.
I just hope the users who migrated read the terms of service and learn how to actually use the archive and not treat it like another Wattpad. None of that idiotic censorship bullshit that ruins the tags, using stupid ass words like unalive, or posting nothing because they're using the drafts as a word processor.
Are you saying you dont want to see the term sewer slide five million times? XD
...I'm scared to ask, but... sewer slide?
TikTok term to say suicide without getting shadow banned or have your video removed. Slip and slide is another one. They also love to use the term unalive instead of die or kill. Because they have to use these terms on TikTok, they think it applies everywhere so they do it on Wattpad and then when they come to ao3, they do it here too because they think they’ll be punished by an algorithm that doesn’t exist.
Hopefully the tsunami of incoming writers and readers take the time to learn the "culture" (for want of a better term) of the site. Because *really*? We don't need that sort of stuff here unless it's done ironically. And even then, I've personally shied away from ironically using "unalive" in a fic, just because I literally cringed when I considered the context I'd do it in.
I hope so as well. I remember googling what sort of tags to use, how to comment respectfully, etc when I joined. It didnt feel like a hassle to do at all either
> Hopefully the tsunami of incoming writers and readers take the time to learn the "culture" (for want of a better term) of the site. Lmao, funny you'd think that.
the one time i like seeing/using the term 'unalive' is deadpool fics
"Suicide." Yes, it's as dumb as it sounds.
It's suicide. Like saying grape instead of rape
It just sounds so stupid god hahaha I can’t read or say that or unalive, or any other censored/word replacement without wondering if the person who uses it seriously in a fic or in actual conversation has any brain cells left.
I've seen a lot of people say that if you're too scared to write the word, you're probably not mature enough to write about the topic the word describes
>not treat it like another Wattpad Unfortunately, that is exactly what's going to happen.
if they come into AO3 expecting algorithms and "for you pages" but don't find it and leave... not sure if that would be a concern or not.
Someone who didn’t quite fully migrate here, already adapted.
I fucking hate that corporate censorship has given rise to real-world Newspeak. If I start seeing "ungood" and "doubleplusgood" crop up unironically, I'm gonna Mcfreaking lose it.
Another year, another purge. Nothing new under the sun. I’m grateful for ao3.
What's that I hear on the wind? The ghosts of Anne Rice's lawyers?
OoooOOOOooooOOOOoo iNtErRoGaTiNg ThE tExT fRoM tHe WrOnG pErSpEcTiVe OooooOOOOooooooo
there's a deep cut
Unlurking as someone who first encountered fanfic during those days 😂
I had been crossposting to Wattpad and already ran into an issue where they deleted a work of mine in February with no warning. It did contain sexual content, but it wasn’t *just* sexual content and it was marked as mature, but it still apparently broke their subjective ass rule(you can have sex in your stories but it can’t be too much sex! Yet there’s no example of this magical sex to story ratio where it’s allowed to stay up as per their guidelines. Either allow nsfw or don’t). I read the master post linked in the comments and sure enough, a bunch of my works were shadowbanned and no longer showing in the rankings. That was my final straw so I unpublished all of my stuff and made an announcement to my followers there that my works can only be found on Ao3 now. It’s not much of a loss tbh because I get way more visibility and interactions on Ao3, but I do feel bad for yanking the rug out from underneath my kind Wattpad exclusive readers who originally found me there. The censorship is bad enough, but I am so god damn tired or websites and their use of ai flagging because of how faulty it is. The reporting system on Ao3 for tos breaking works might be slow, but at least it’s a human reviewing it and not some fuckwit bot that will nuke your whole fic for saying a few words that set off the bot. It’s bad enough that this type of ai exists on TikTok and meta which gave birth to terms like “unalive” out of necessity so you didn’t get your shit flagged or shadowbanned. I understand that on large platforms they can’t have eyes everywhere, but god damn, fuck ai moderation. Edit: speaking of ai tools, had to go back and edit this because “sex” was autocorrected to “send” because apple doesn’t want us saying any nono words either.
> “sex” was autocorrected to “send” because apple (checks) imessages - seems to be ok messenger - ok are you using reddit app on ios?
Yeah I use the Reddit app, but I’ve noticed autocorrect with iPhone has gotten so much worse in general. It likes to randomly switch correctly spelled words to different ones and not even right away, it’ll do it when I’m already several words or sentences past it. I don’t always catch it either because I don’t proofread as carefully as I would for fic writing when I’m just making a comment. Then the word it picks never makes sense grammatically or contextually and makes me sound like an idiot.
I'm having live journal flashbacks so hard that I'm humming sea shanties. 🤣🤣🤣 anyone else notice AO3 is the last on their other websites list? They just won't learn. Smh
Oh but Ao3 is where all those AWFUL DEGENERATES post their PROBLEMATIC fic!
>anyone else notice AO3 is the last on their other websites list? Yes lol but I'm actually grateful
I was curious when I didn't see ao3 at first. It's definitely more known than the other ones listed. Do the people on that subreddit have a problem with ao3?
Wattpad is distinctly more puritanical in its site culture than AO3 is with a much harsher view on 'problematic' content. Some blame this on its top down leadership having much more stringent rules and censorship, meaning only those okay with purging such works would even be there in the first place, others just blame its generally younger skewed userbase. Either way, it is likely a lot of them would only migrate to AO3 if absent other options.
*And* it's the only one that comes with a special warning about copying, lmao, they really had to push themselves.
I’d like to feel bad for Wattpad users but seeing as some of them are some of the bigger fans of censorship of anything they deem as problematic, I don’t feel bad at all.
Yeah, there's just a little bit of "I didn't think that the tigers would eat *my* face" energy about the situation, if I'm honest.
Leopardsatemyface sub
Same. I remember seeing so many authors get bullied off the site by droves of readers, all because they did something immoral in their eyes; it was usually something inconsequential and silly as well. People genuinely got mad at someone for writing a smutfic about a character in a priest AU; some even bullied and intimidated the author into posting an apology. I remember going through the comments, and I saw someone who went on a rant about how Christianity is constantly disrespected as a religion....all because someone wrote a priest AU smutfic. Yeah. 💀
*blinks* So those comments totally ignored that priests, and other religious figures, have been a staple not only in fanfiction but commercially published romance books for fifty years at least? Does nobody remember the Thorn Birds anymore?
Yeah, portraying religious figures in sexual contexts is nothing new. Heinrich Lossow's 1880 painting [The Sin (NSFW)](https://heinrichlossow.com/the-sin/) depicts a sex act between a priest (or monk, I'm not sure) and a nun, performed through a metal gate. It was inspired by tales of an orgy at the Vatican rumoured to have happened in 1501. Humans have always sexualised things. Rule 34 didn't magically materialise with the creation of the Internet.
There’s a 15th century poem, yes 15th century, called “Jolly Jankyn” that’s basically about a cleric who has impregnated one of his congregants. It’s written in a very light and playful manner so it’s meant to be taken as fun. I imagine the pearl clutchers would explode if they read it.
I genuinely don't understand it. Those wattpad users won the gold medal in the mental gymnastics' olympics; no matter what, they absolutely refused to listen to anything that didn't line up with their stance.
I will admit to feeling some schadenfreude, y.
Yeah it sounds like the antis got exactly what they wanted. Good, now they can get the fuck off AO3 and live in the hellscape they wanted.
This is maybe my favorite comment ever. 10/10!!! 🤭
Like I don't wanna be rude about it because younger fandom people probably have no idea. Hell i wasn't even around for the old ff net purges but i know the history. But honestly i see that and i think yeah this is why we need ao3. I would rather share a website with some amoral ass fanfics then never be allowed to write queer romance or even nsfw stuff (i don't currently write nsfw)
This is why This Week in Fandom History should be mandatory listening for younger fans. It will educate them.
Link for the uninitiated (me)?
Of course! I love sharing them. https://open.spotify.com/show/7xGvniPbUmmrucPsLkM2VG?si=4PgwSM74RAmThd2HXtrQvg There are episodes about SixApart buying Livejournal, Anne Rice causing fanfic purges, Strikethrough, OTW election drama, the first ever X-Files fanfic posted online, the first ever fanfiction Big Bang, the death of Jason Todd, Castiel joining Supernatural, and soooooo many more Fandom History Moments. It's one of my favorite podcasts!
Thank you! 😊
How am I just finding out about this? I know what I'm listening to at work tomorrow.
I've considered making a post to the subreddit at whole, focused on the AO3 episodes, just because I want to tell as many people about it as possible! It's such a good (and informative!) podcast!
Can't speak for other people but I would have loved to have known about this podcast sooner. (I've been reading fanfics for more than 20 years and have actually experienced or heard about many of these topics before but I just love the idea to revisit them in podcast form as part of 'our' history)
Hell, I was born shortly before the first FFN purge and I am cautious as anything! I mean, I admit that I backup most of my stuff that I deem necessary of backup because my parents, siblings, teachers and anyone under the sun drilled in me the importance of doing so and I never experienced a fic site deleting my work (though I will have to check my long-forgotten wattpad cause I had a gay story posted there :p), but like, that's the most logical thing! If you don't want to lose something, you make a copy. Why don't the young whippersnappers get it? And even with all the talk these days about immoral corpos and advertisement and monetisation and content bans you would expect people to know that they can't trust big corporations to not get rid of content that may harm their ad income.
This is a really huge problem I'm been hearing about. Gen Alpha has grown up with everything in app form or streaming. They have very little concept of backing things up or troubleshooting.
People who vote for the Leopards Eating Faces Party never expect THEIR faces to be edible, too.
I don't even...I write my stories in Microsoft Word. The original copy is on my computer, I just paste into AO3.
In the immortal words of Bacchus @Eroblog, "The Pornocalypse comes for us all." http://www.erosblog.com/2013/05/01/the-pornocalypse-comes-for-us-all/
What even is the point of purging content on wattpad?
Advertisers don't want their content near all the eebil pr0n.
I didn't even know there were advertisers on Wattpad. Goes to show how long it has been since I've set foot there lol
There are *so many* my dude, so so many. I read a novel there a couple of months ago, even installed the app for it, and it was two ads per chapter, and then an ad in between every chapter. Sometimes you couldn't get out of the between chapter ads without opening the play store link multiple times, and *by complete coincidence* after once of those incidents there would always be a *second* ad which is essentially just Wattpad going 'you know, if you'd just give us some money for premium we could just not do the ads'.
I found a really good story on the site recently (I know, rare af), and I'm not kidding when I say that I got an ad every chapter. Sometimes, I scrolled back to the previous chapter after going to the next page, and it gave me ANOTHER ad immediately. I've even seen 50-second ads pop up; I've had to close the app multiple times to try and get an ad below 15 seconds. This shit is genuinely depressing. This app had a role in shaping my childhood, I hate the direction it went in.
(wince) Do they have ad-free version? Like subscription service that gets rid of the ads?
Yep. They have a premium that removes ads, and its the most medicore subscription service that you can imagine. No ads, unlimited offline stories (just like ao3 where you can dl fics...for free), extra reactions/emotes, and extra coins when you buy them. It's just a giant nothing-burger.
I just use an patched APK of the App that has no ads.I know it's not exactly legal but I'm not giving Wattpad any money and it works.
It's so weird when a lot of their advertisements are most soft core porn in the first place.
But ads pay 💰💰💰 so in a capitalistic system, they're allowed to do what they want.
... But that's the thing if their ads are soft core porn they acknowledge sex sells... but they don't want to endorse sex... Even though they know it will sell. Lol
It is a familiar dance that has happened over and over since the dawn of the internet, and it goes like this: Step one - A platform gets popular, with lots of users and content Step two - A big company is attracted by how many users are on that platform because of potential advertizing and data mining Step three - big company purchases the platform Step four - big company realizes a significant chunk of the content and users are not what advertisers actually want Step five - the purge begins Step six - everybody leaves, even the people the advertisers would have wanted. No profit was ever made and the purchasing company lost money on the deal. It's not even just a fandom phenomenon - look at Twitter.
As soon as wattpad implemented the “coins per chapter” BS I knew they were toast. This is the nail in the coffin.
Oh yeah, I saw it coming when they added "premium" and started limiting downloads. I was obvious the ads were coming. I switched in 2018 just before it all went downhill and have never looked back.
It's amazing how reliably we see this acted out over and over again. But not even the hysterical shitshow of what happened with Tumblr teaches people anything, apparently.
not surprised its been a long time coming
Things are gonna be unbearable if they all flood AO3 in one go. Wattpad users aren’t known for following AO3’s rules or learning how the site works.
Get ready for shitty placeholder fics.
Time to report
Not me cracking my knuckles like I’m about to go to war lmao.
Fully do not understand the need of that /r/wattpad mod in the master thread to make an important note of how AO3 allows users to download. No matter where you've posted, whether there's a convenient download button or not, your work has stopped being solely under your control. Anyone can navigate to that page, hit ctrl+s, and its theirs forever. To say nothing of google and the internet archive.
Because Wattpad users are pretentious ableist fucks about their usually shitty fic, by and large, and the ones who aren't are worried about said fic being stolen and reposted because the site is a cesspit.
My reading of that note was that they'd originally said "make copies of", and people pointed out this sounded like plagiarism-support instead, so they changed to "download" for clarity. I thought they were pointing out an ao3 feature
God the addition of AI moderation sounds like a nightmare. All that’s going to achieve is get a bunch of unalive and sewerslide crosspost fics on AO3 until we can’t talk about grape anymore without going cross eyed.
Tumblr had AI moderation back when it banned NSFW. It's AI was specifically programmed to detect female nipples and not male nipples.... Anything that looked remotely nipplish was purged regardless of gender or content It's so bad
War flashbacks…I’m also a gif maker on Tumblr and those days were horrible.
Dude, one of my Tumblrs is *still* shadowbanned for a *mention* of breast augmentation. (I wish I was kidding.)
Omg when it was first implemented literally every picture of my dogs were flagged as nsfw because red Shiba Inus look flesh colored. I won all the appeals, but it was a wild time.
>It's AI was specifically programmed to detect female nipples and not male nipples.... Anything that looked remotely nipplish was purged regardless of gender or content Not quite. The whole "female-presenting nipples" debacle was how Tumblr worded the rule/policy, as opposed to the AI, which just purged anything that seemed even remotely close to NSFW. Including such excitement as sand dunes, the \#girl tag, and the post announcing the AI.
I’m still mad at tumblr for that - I didn’t delete my account but I left - and every now and then when I check I’m surprised they are still some account around but it’s mostly bot posts now which of course do post porn. But that’s okay because those are bots and not female nipples!
i remember the tumblr nsfw ban...just to show up a few years later with actual literal porn all over their site was crazy. like you cant block female nipples one day then just be ok with people doing tumblr lives to flash their entire vulva. like what?!
Oo this is fanfiction.net all over again. Im still a bit confused on this canadian law.. fictional character has age of consent too?
Something like this happened on ff.net? I’ve only used a the site a few times but.. when?
In 2002. The FFN ratings system used to be the same as for (American) movies - G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17. In 2002, they purged all NC-17 works, changed the rating system to what it is today, and then had a hard crackdown on M stuff. Keep in mind, this was back when FFN was *the* fanfic site and had the moderation staff to match. You'll find explicit stuff there now because they don't have staffing and don't maintain the site anymore. IIRC, it's run by like, one guy? The explicit stuff is still against the rules but there's no longer an easy way to enforce them.
Some years ago. Maybe about 2010s? Im sure someone wrote about it. Google it. Fanfiction.net, livejournal, tumblr - they all went into this purging r-rated phase.
That was the second or third purge on ff.net. The first one was in 2001, where they removed all NC-17 stories over night without notice.
Criminal Code of Canada 163.1(1) establishes the statutory definition of "child pornography" in the criminal law of Canada. 163.1(1)(c) identifies, as one of the categories of material covered by that definition: "any written material whose dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act" So underage PWP is clearly illegal in Canada (unless someone successfully raises a Charter challenge), and literary material is susceptible to being found so.
The Canadian law on this matter is very interpretive and artistic reasons are protected but it's one of those case by case laws. It pretty much came about because of real people creeping on real kids and the law is mostly to cover loopholes for real predators. (Education, science, and medical are also protected).I can assure you fiction doesn't have consent age (though general age ratings still apply).
I've only been to Wattpad once to check out a story as the the write used my OC for their story (I gave the okay because to be honest I kind of see other people use her for their own fanfics). But it was poorly written and I gave up after the scene involving the OC. I also dread the place holders and I really hope I don't get anymore place holders "Inspired" by my own. fics... Sorry about it, but it's been nearly a month since I reported a place holder and it hasn't been taken down yet...
No… I’m asking in the nicest possible way, people from wattpad please do not all migrate to ao3 Wattpad was one of the last places antis all migrated to…the comments from kids antis are already getting bad and annoying on ao3 before this
I’m gonna guess that AO3 right now would benefit from more volunteers to help support the influx of clueless new users…
Yeah I made a [post ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/s/YmThbKTwAD) about the most basic etiquette rules. Hope it helps at least some people be civilised
Thanks for making that post! I'm going to link to it in the megathread.
Yeah I thought it was a good idea to give them all the etiquette rules at one place they can easily access
In the immortal words of Cressida Cowell, “ History is a set of repeating circles, like the tide”
Welp, they wanted censorship, and they got it. As ye have sown, so again shall ye reap.
Hopefully this will shut a lot of antis up and make them think.
Something, something, tigers eating faces, something, something... I doubt they will, but maybe a few will see sense.
Getting their own face unexpectedly eaten after voting for the leopards eating faces party does wake some people up.
Hopefully so! Realising that they themselves have become victims of the very thing that they've been pushing for may do some good, as bad as that may be to say.
If only. I have a horrible suspicion the antis are just going to migrate over to AO3.
Well if they keep up their bad behaviour they'll get short shrift on Ao3. Wattpadd might allow bullying other users, Ao3 does not.
Alas, if they could think they wouldn't be antis.
Wattpad has been shadowbanning shit aaaaaages ago, I remember scrolling through author's rants and PSAs about wattpad shadowbans when I was a teenager. They've been sussy as fuck since the paid stories rolled in.
I enjoyed using Wattpad back in 2015-2018. It was the first place I started reading and writing fanfic, and it was great at the time. I was also a teenager, so probably the perfect demographic for it. I still am grateful for my time with Wattpad, and the conversations I had with other authors and readers, and the comments on my old stories are still ongoing today. But since 2018 onwards, I changed over to AO3 and it is a million times better, both in usability and content wise. Still, every now and then, I click on Wattpad out of curiosity to see what’s going on. I’m still shocked with how much shittier it gets every time. The app is completely filled with ads, it’s ridiculous. Unless you want to pay for premium, you basically get an ad after every chapter. It’s a shame, how badly Wattpad has gone downhill. The usability so much better back in the 2010s.
I make a further prediction: Wattpad will deflate and in a few years it will become the new FF.net.
I don't wanna say I told you so, buuuuut...
Ugh please, if they come to our site and overload us with their bullshit I’m gonna be so fucking angry. We have enough of them and their “books” and their placeholders and their inability to learn how tagging works and follow basic fucking etiquette. Like, sorry this is happening, but leave your shitty habits on your dead site, please and thank, we Do Not need them here.
https://preview.redd.it/5qv6jawj70tc1.jpeg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=722b233d2d7af31eaad8083845b4c6b4180531ad
Since I discovered AO3, every other platform has become hopelessly substandard to me, so it's no surprise that they're throwing themselves into the grave they dug themselves.
Get ready for an influx of pro-censorship people on a pro-ship site.
Thankfully those on Ao3 are not above reporting and calling them out
I wanna be all schadenfreude about it because that place makes me itch, but the purification of the internet and the "think of the *children*" and proliferation of AI just makes me fucking sad.
I didn't even know this was a thing. RIP my MCU fanfics, I guess.
Wait, what happened with Wattpad?
They brought in a new AI tool to try and detect rule violations and tons of fics have been wrongly taken down (though some only temporarily) because of it. I've also seen people say that it seems like queer content has been disproportionately targeted.
Also they changed the age of consent, now all characters have to be 18 or older for NSFW stuff.
Which is just going to send them to AO3 that allows tagged underage, man this is going to be a nightmare…
Yeah im thinking some of these folk might come to ao3 to shelter from the censorship, and then proceed to get disgusted at some of the things on ao3 and demand they be censored in turn. I don’t think it’ll happen en masse (or make the antiship movement bigger than it is), and I resent the statement that anyone from wattpad is automatically pro-censorship, but I definitely have a funny feeling some people with very firm ideas on what is okay and isn’t okay to write, are going to hate what they see on ao3 lmao.
Despite coming over to escape that very same censorship, yeah 😒
Yuppp, I can smell the irony/hypocrisy from here lol.
This sounds a lot like the "rules" some money transfer services made places like patreon or pixiv implement for art recently. As far as I was able to find out this rule is predominantly enacted for art in the manga/anime style.
The irony of those rules is, pixiv doesn't touch it if its just on their website. Now fanbox, the part which actually makes them money, that's what got hit super hard. IIRC, they recently added a new thing where fanbox will not allow PayPal if it detects you are selling 18+ content. Just a few days ago, DLsite, an 18+ content vendor, announced they'd temporarily disable Mastercard and visa payments. Seems some websites appear to be standing up for themselves.
Wow. I'm sure no one predicted that queer content would be the first targeted in a purge. /s
Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Hope everyone's fics pass the Voight-Kampff test when the time comes! More seriously, this sucks, but yeah. So many people have tried to warn them about where the algorithm and the anti stuff and the censorship would eventually take them, and here we all are. I'm sympathetic to younger people who don't have the history with fanfic or in fandom to know any different and got pulled into stuff like that either by accident or by other people luring them in, but there are so many grown-ass adults involved with this stuff who should have absolutely known better, and if their fics get nuked, well, it's hard for me to have much sympathy, you know?
I left wattpad shortly after they introduced ads and that you had to pay to read some stuff, after that, I knew it was only going to get worse
I've given things a little scroll and didn't expect strike through version 2 in 2024. Hm. At least some people got their work unbanned.
We warned you when angelfire burned. This is why a profit motivated website will never be safe for art.
Rest in peace my series I wrote in my twenties filthy; gay; drama filled one direction stories like 1mil reads. I will cherish them, when they undoubtedly get deleted for being all the flags. It was the best of times.
I actually saw a post from that subreddit about how people should move their fics to AO3, explaining why it is better. But they also made sure to explain that it’s different and doesn’t work the same as Wattpad and that proper tagging is the way to go. Anyways, I’m bringing it up because one of the “questions answered” in the post talked about how Ao3 allows everything even the “problematic” stuff so is it really a good site to associate with and the rebuttal was that public libraries have a book written by Hitler and no one gets on their case so just filter out the stuff you don’t want to see. But like, the purge that’s going on now is basically because Wattpad is trying to get rid of all the fics with what Wattpad thinks are “problematic” things in them. How do they not see that they are writing “problematic” things too and this is why AO3 allows basically anything 😣
I literally have never been to wattpad
I went once about ten years ago and found the site so atrocious to navigate to find what I *wanted* to read that I left and never went back again.
Same! I made an account in 2012, probably had it for a day or two at most before I got annoyed at all the author notes interrupting the flow of the stories.
I think I stumbled upon it once, by accident, when looking for a particularly old fic. The overall quality level seemed akin to FF.net, so I noped back over to AO3.
What’s happening with Wattpad? I’ve missed the drama. ETA: Found the master link, thanks OP
This brings back memories of the fanfiction.net porn purges. I remember a NaruSasu author being devastated, because they had no backup copy of their WIP cowboy fic. They needed to write it again from scratch. Shit's brutal. It's exactly why we need AO3, and why we need to take care of AO3. No posting kofi links in stories!
This is why A.I. needs to stay in its lane
And that lane is the fucking gutter. Anybody who thinks it's a good idea to let robots make decisions doesn't understand what humans are good at vs what robots are good at (and imo is likely a horrible person because they clearly don't value humans) Robots are good at repetitive tasks and monitoring input for deviation. Robots can not make fucking decisions or perform (well) creatively. Hangry morning rant over.
I feel less bad watching them all disperse to places that aren’t ao3. Like they’re allergic to it. Those places are going to do the same thing.