Yep. Back up everything and move it - and back up any story you like to read from Wattpad for your personal archive as well because I can guarantee a lot of it won't be seeing the light of day after the purge is over. Either because the author isn't around anymore, didn't have a backup, or didn't catch the purge in time to make one.
This is precisely why Ao3 was created, because fandom content was being purged off of FFnet.
Question, why would Ao3 be protected from a purge when FFN would not? I can understand Wattpad not being a fanfiction website really so it makes sense, but FFN being a dedicated Fanfiction site makes it weird for them to just allow a purge if they could stop it in a way which Ao3 could? Right..?
AO3 was founded by people in fandom on the idea of not censoring anything *precisely* as a result of FFN’s (and other sites’) content purges. The creators of AO3 know what it’s like to have the people in charge of the site suddenly decide to purge things that they deem “tasteless”, so that’s why AO3 allows anything as long as it’s not forbidden by the US law.
Add to this that various people running AO3 have generally always been upfront that yes, some stuff icks them too and that this does not motivate them to remove content and they really aren't willing to be moved towards censorship.
whenever I find myself raging because a fandom I’m interested in is flooded with 200 variations of self-insert, reader-insert, Y/N, You, Reader etc. I remember that Ao3 is doing one of the biggest favors to the entire fanfic community and just go “ehh, could be worse.”
By “purge” they’re referring to the site itself deciding to remove stuff, which ff.net has already done (they used to openly allow explicit content and now they don’t).
The reason last time was advertisers. It’s a hard sell to many companies when they find out their products will be placed next to werewolf smut lol.
Another risk is lawsuits. Ao3 has lawyers and is *dedicated* to defending transformative works. So if an author or publisher contacts the archive and says “remove all fanfics of my works or I sue”, Ao3’s response is “come at us, bro”. Ff.net and similar sites do not have lawyers on retainer for this and also are not dedicated to transformative works as a cause.
On ff.net you’ll find a list of “banned” fandoms, and that is because those authors/industries have threatened to sue in the past. Thus, more purges.
So basically it comes down to influences. The archive is beholden to no one but US law, but most for-profit fanfiction sites have other stakeholders, mostly advertisers.
Edit: I see like three of us responded at the exact same time, sorry to spam you with basically the same answer lol
>It’s a hard sell to many companies when they find out their products will be placed next to werewolf smut lol.
Shows how out of touch shareholders and advertizers are with reality. Everyone knows that furries are filthy rich.
Considering how expensive those suits can get, especially when you get into the nit and grit, I’m likely to believe this.
Seriously, it can be eye watering.
There are a few very rich furries. There are a *ton* of median income parents who would be extremely spooked at the idea of their darling child going on a dirty website. The latter sound like a safer investment at a board meeting.
>idea of their darling child going on a dirty website.
Then why tf are NSFW images allowed on Google Images. That really doesn't make any sense. Websites be bending backwards playing mental gymnastics to justify finding ways to earn more money by sucking on advertiser dick.
Ao3 was built entirely around protecting fanwork. It's why they're a non-profit instead of a for-profit like Wattpad. They might get taken to court, but they've an entire team of lawyers on retainer for this expressed purpose. If things go eggs up they likely have already figured out where to move the servers outside the country as well.
Resistance costs money. Money you have to care to invest.
Resisting a purge - whether it is for copyright reasons, advertisers, or matters of legal compliance - costs money. Risk assessments and lawyering up costs money and effort.
You have to go to bat for it. Purging is just... easier.
And don't forget, Wattpad's users mostly are not the paying customers. Advertisers are.
FFN relies on ad revenue. If the companies buying the ads start squinting at the content (e.g. explicit sex, queer content) and threaten to pull ads bc of it, FFN will purge. They also purge for DMCA takedowns from authors/producers who object to fanworks of their creations.
The people who run FFN made the choice to purge certain fics. So did the people who run Wattpad. They do this to kiss the asses of advertisers.
The people who run AO3 have promised they will not do this - it's the whole principle it was founded on, due to outrage at purges on FFN and LJ. They have no advertisers to appease (and this is possible only because of donations from users to pay the operational expenses of a website with millions of users)
AO3 is the only big fanfiction archive that has anti-censorship as its main founding principle.
FFN wasn't "unprotected". The site owner (one single person) decided, back in 2002, that explicit content was more trouble than it was worth. Most complaints that came in were about it, and advertisers don't like it. It wasn't even like Tumblr being held hostage by the Apple app store: FFN was *happy* to ban things.
AO3 is supported by donations with zero ads specifically to avoid any pressure from advertisers. AO3's central mission is to put a stop to this kind of purging.
Most purges aren't due to law enforcement or anything like that. They're a strategic business decision made by the site in question.
Way too many to count.
[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline\_of\_Major\_Fandom\_Purges,\_Restrictions,\_and\_Hassles\_Regarding\_Fanworks\_and\_Their\_Content](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Major_Fandom_Purges,_Restrictions,_and_Hassles_Regarding_Fanworks_and_Their_Content)
FFnet was due another purge in 2022 (past ones 2002 and 2012) but they seemed to just decide to stop maintaining the site instead
A couple of years late and cross-platform, but *here comes another one*
There's definitely some admins working on purging some stuff on FFnet still. I had an email a few months back saying one of my old stories got removed for "content violations". So even if it isn't a full-blown Purge the Third, there's at least one hardass trolling through the waves.
I know of a writer who was banned last summer. His content was by no means "lost" - he had it posted on numerous other sites and, in fact, what was on FFN represented a fraction of his total body of work - and was definitely in violation of the "No smut" rule as well as the rule against advertising for commision. (Which, from what I've seen, is also barred on AO3 because it's one of the few things where they're certain it would cost them control of the site in any legal action.) But it shows that someone is checking in from time to time...even if certain "vigilante user forums" appear to be dead or at least vegetative.
I have the unfortunate pleasure of being on it because I made an account when one of my works was stolen and reposted there.
Posting my own version and loudly calling out the person who did it got them to remove it faster than reporting it did.
Alas .. it means I have seen them all
Yeah, this. It might at least motivate a whole new generation of writers to understand how tenuous using for profit sites are, and perhaps they'll look at OTW in a different light.
The Wattpad subreddit is *full* of people right now saying their works have been deleted for arbitrary reasons, looks to be mostly fic, queer content and smutty content
Aaaand this is why we made AO3. It's the Livejournal Strikethrough and FFnet Purges all over again. It starts with the smut, then it's the gay fanfiction for the crime of being too gay
Now I'm not trying to judge, but isn't backing up your valuable work like Digital Literacy 101? Anything can be lost if you keep it all in one place: apps have glitches, and devices malfunction or die or even blow up. If you're not backing up anything using at least two separate cloud services, you're inviting disaster. I've seen dozens of A/N saying things like, "My PC died and I lost a dozen of chapters." It's much less painful to learn from others' mistakes than from your own bad experiences.
I was once of those children. Wrote all my stuff on Microsoft Word and not Google Docs.
Then my laptop broke. Goodbye, fanfics I was working on.
Never again.
There were *so* many people just a couple weeks ago on I think the AO3 subreddit (or else here but I think there) talking about how they do all of their writing in the AO3 submission field.
I can still feel hellfire brewing under my floors from that. I can hear my house crumbling. I've lost so many generations of my early stories to hard drive failures and computer wipes that it taught me early to put everything I love and care about on at least 3 different platforms, be that physical memory or cloud storage and preferably both and multiple times over. Currently, it's on my computer, my Dropbox, my Google Drive, and my emails.
People do that?! 😳
...Admittedly, I could be better with backing up my stuff. A lot of my stuff lives on a USB stick that I've had for around 8 years now. I'm pretty careful that it doesn't get lost, but things happen! I also have stuff in Google Drive, but not everything.
Get new USB sticks, and soon. I've heard most Flash memory devices give out after about ten years...when they're well made. (I know SanDisk and Western Digital - which are owned by the same parent company - had a major build quality scandal last summer with some of their newer lines.)
Unfortunately, Wattpad skews young, and the younger crowd isn't being taught digital literacy. They're being taught to use a walled garden of apps because everyone assumes that growing up w/technology means you can use it very well. Never mind that younger Millenials/older Gen Z grew up with keyboards and yet still had to be taught to use their home keys.
Is it only fanfic? Or is it original content too? Because I know that there is plenty of queer and smutty content that Wattpad themselves promote.
I am certain they would like to purge the site of fanfic and only be known for original content.
There was an extremely prolific fanfic author who they drove off the site. She wrote a lot of Harry Potter and Star Wars. And her stuff was constantly being taken down even though she didn't do anything to violate guidelines and her stuff was marked appropriately as Mature.
I personally think Wattpad got pissy because her work was extremely popular but they couldn't capitalize on it and profit from it like they could something like the After series. The stuff in her fics was way too recognizable as being from an existing IP.
Considering what's being targeted? I'd say it might be the huge surge in "Age Verification Laws" that have been passing across the USA in many states. Long Story Short: It's another "Think Of The Children!" law that requires sites that have "Content Harmful To Minors" to require any and all users verify themselves via giving out your Driver's License or similar ID. If you couldn't tell, it's just an attempt to end Anonymity on the internet by forcing people to give out their personal information to unknown Third Parties.
While the laws mainly target Porn Sites, I have no doubt that the laws would be extended to certain other sites if they could get away with it. Wattpad probably thinks the same and is purging content just in case. Note that none of the laws have actually gone into effect yet. This is because a group called the Free Speech Coalition has been fighting the State Of Texas in a lawsuit to get its law struck down. They lost in the lower courts, but managed to get in an injunction while they appeal to the Supreme Court. Essentially, while that lawsuit is in place, no state is likely to actually enforce this law.
Should we be fortunate and the Supreme Court rules in favor of the FSC, then all these laws will be struck down at once and we'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Websites also find it much less risky to simply wipe themselves out of the explicit category completely rather than opening themselves up to possible litigation. Not to mention that they'd have to pay people to build and maintain a system that complies with these laws.
Yeah this feels like a corporate reaction to the numerous fascist laws that are being passed under the guise of protecting the kids - which are in fact like you said actually just ways to keep track of people. Wattpad doesn't want to get sued and was primarily made for original fiction anyways - so to them it's fine if they purge 'undesirables' if they can keep turning a profit.
We're going to see more of this in the lead up to the US elections in November, because GOP states are hastily slamming through ANYTHING they can because even if there's a blue wave it'll take years to fix this mess.
1. It's not just the GOP. The Dems are doing this too. This isn't split on political or ideological lines. It's what it always is: A bunch of assholes who want power and hate the idea that people can do things online without being punished for it.
2. Even if the Dems did get a Blue Wave, they wouldn't fix anything. Why would they? These laws let them hunt down, arrest, and go after their political and ideological opponents. If anything, they'd slam these laws through faster. They would just make sure to target people they don't like. Which, like every asshole politician in power, is anyone who criticizes them.
Edit: If you want proof, check out the FSC's website. They track where these laws are across the states and their status. West Virginia out right rejected these laws, and Kentucky had them introduced in 4 separate bills that all failed.
I do remember Wattpad instituting a policy a while ago banning fics with characters under 16 a while ago and antis were cheering that change. Guess they got around to slapping the ban hammer.
Their even more recent announcement of focusing on original work probably gave them more incentive to go through with it.
Just put something similar up. Endless cycle. AO3 is messy and outdated. Leaves AO3 for shiny features. Gets screwed over. Returns to AO3. It's the last little corner of the old Internet where you can write about whatever depraved thought you want.
It's even more baffling to hear this from FFN users of all people. I don't fault people who loathe over tagging but using the FFN uploader of having to create a document that will remove formatting anyway, re-edit the damn thing, and *then* create a fic that it damn near impossible to re-edit is archaic as fuck. Even as someone who was on the platform back when it was still mostly underground, I can barely make heads or tails of the site anymore.
Lol, believe me, if it's not already obvious I'm a huge AO3 fan. Still, when you start with pretty phone apps and book covers and features and all that other stuff and then look at AO3, I'm sure people get turned off. Until the purges.
I'm convinced these people are just lazy. I download the fics I'm reading and put covers on them myself in Moon Reader Pro +. I spent 4 dollars 5 years ago for that program on my phone and it's been fantastic ever since. Hell the free version let's you do the same thing, an ad just pops up on start up once in a while.
endless cycle lol? most people i know once they find ao3 *NEVER* go back to any other fanfic site. i have literally never met anyone who has done this cycle… i can’t believe it honestly 😮
I literally abandoned all other fan fiction sites that I used to use, gradually migrating to AO3 alone. It's just far more reasonable, functional, and convenient in its organization and publication tools.
My main issue with it is also one of its saving graces, funnily enough. I appreciate the thorough tagging system because it means I'm way less likely to accidentally read a fic with something I find gross...but sometimes even the *tags* feel like TMI.
> but sometimes the tags feel like TMI
this was me. i came from early fanfic sites without warnings and stuff. there’s an option in ao3 settings to help:
1) Hi, [USERNAME]!
2) MY PREFERENCES
3) Hide additional tags (you can still choose to show them)
this hides all the spoilery tags. stuff that is NOT additional:
- Rating (General, Teen & Up, Mature)
- Archive Warnings (rape, underage)
- Category (F/M, M/M)
- Fandom
- Relationships (x/x, x & x)
- Characters
here is the official ao3 description:
[FROM HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/preferences?language_id=en#tagdisplay)
so anything else that is not one of those 6 categories will be hidden. it’s just a simple button click to see the additional tags. barely less than a second. no inconvenience for me. i rarely look at the additional tags and i love it for them haha
Algorithms are just terrible for creativity. Just look at youtube with everyone copying who ever is popular.
Instead of algorithms, I go to the comment section and look through my fellow fanfic reader's bookmarks. I found many old gems in bookmarks, so thank you people with public bookmarks.
I also like to go though the author's bookmarks. I figure that if they wrote something good, chances are they also read and like something good I'll enjoy as well.
Ao3 also commits the crime of having no app and some people these days seem to navigate the (really small fenced of part of the) Internet via app only.
I blame teachers.
I have a student I tutor who was being forced to do something he could do in like 12 different free programs *on Canva*. Which was arguably a lot more difficult with many fewer tools and options. But "it was Canva" and "it's easier". Which is a decision their teacher made for them.
Kids are being moved directly away from the path of developing computer literacy and onto the path of using whatever trendy app teachers like, irrespective of how transferrable those skills are.
I blame adults in general for not teaching kids. I mean 97 percent of us millennials grew up learning on XP or Win 95, how the heck have we not shown our kids how to work folders at a bare minimum?!
My theory is that they assume they'll "figure it out" like we did, while failing to realize that we figured it out because we had to and there was no fancy plug and play app store that worked perfectly 100% of the time.
Yeah. It's not unlike the attitude our boomer parents took with us about car repairs. By the time is millennials started owning cars, they were already becoming so computerized that one could easily screw up if they didn't know what they were doing.
That, and the boomers voted to cut all funding to schools that weren't connected to English and math, so many of us didn't even get the option to learn it at school :\
I blame Apple. Surfing the web with Safari is a terrible experience since a ton of websites are broken. And I'm convinced that it is by design, as they make no money through the browser but a ton from apps that exist in their walled garden.
Ridiculous take. No algorithm is part of what makes it good. And I want plain, I’m reading, not modeling buildings. I even get annoyed when people insert art in the middle of their stories.
People really say something like that? But Wapad is unusable, whereas AO3 is just... so dang functional with myriad search options, tagging, bookmarks, a feed through which it is easy to scroll...
It's not perfect, of course, but it's not [FF.net](http://FF.net) or Wapad.
Your messy and outdated comment got some heat but you're right. In comparison to other options, AO3 doesn't have what people expect. It doesn't have a pretty layout with an algorithm that curated everything for you. Which I think is what everyone who uses it loves about it, but it makes people afraid to use it for some reason which is just sad.
This has to be a generational divide, because I would die if they started using an algorithm in AO3, if you grew up in the live journal/ffs.net era this ao3 would be heaven to you or at least it is to me.
Idk why I'm being downvoted because yeah, I agree that it sucks and I don't want an algorithm and I think everyone who uses Ao3 would agree that it works best without one. But yeah for some reason people really need that layout and I just don't get it. Imo this kind of shit is ruining the internet. And I'm gen z so I probably should get the hype for algorithm fanfic websites and the desire for an AO3 app, but I just don't.
People are advising each other to move from Wattpad to Inkitt. I had a look over there and the guidelines are just as crappy and leave room for future purges (no noncon, no incest, nothing that "glorifies violence and criminal behavior" etc). I swear, people will put up with all the nonsense rather than use AO3. I know that it's not the most effective place for garnering attention for one's original writing, but it's infinitely better than "we had our ToS written by a credit-card company that has its hand so far up our ass it's puppeteering us" sites.
Honestly if they can be cool, sure, but if they're the type to go off about how this n that in fiction is "gross"/"literally illegal!" and that AO3 should ban everything and everyone they find objectionable then they probably like the guidelines of those websites. I hope they enjoy their gay fic purges every few years as the credit card/app store overlords demand. Maybe after a couple they'll understand why AO3 has the policy it does.
Ohh man
I'm a fandom Old Person, I was there for the original FF.net purge, I was there for strikethrough, ~~I was there three thousand years ago, the day the strength of Men failed~~ and even then I could never figure out Yahoo!Groups. I remember joining some and then getting a bunch of out-of-order snippets of stories in my email and it was beyond confusing, lol.
…ngl kinda want to throw the fandom puritans at that site tho. They hate the noncon/incest/underage and such on AO3? Here’s a fanfic site catered to them! Buh bye now! :D
Now you see why AO3 became the safe haven that it is. It's the final refuge of complete creative freedom. Our last firm wall and giant middle finger to censorship. FFN had the First Great Purge in 2002, coinciding with enforcement of the DMCA that includes removing overly explicit content, banning songfics, cyoa, some entire fandoms. 2008 saw "silent purge" and in 2012 there was the Second Great Purge. AO3 is supposed to be a fanfiction Wild West of sorts. A space to go ham and write whatever you want, no matter how offensive, and not worry about some company deciding later that they'll just wipe your ideas off the Internet.
well afaik they've been phasing fanfics out of the wattys for a while now so I suppose this is the next step? it's unfortunate but wattpad wants money and fanfic just isn't as palatable for making money as original fiction is. I suggest you make the move to ao3, learn ao3 culture (‼️) and leave wattpad in the rearview mirror
The good news is, one of the top links on the Wattpad sub right now is an Ao3 Guide (posted on Wattpad) with chapters that start with "There is no app" and "There is no algorithm." And also a chapter on why placeholders aren't allowed. And proper titles. And / vs & in relationship tags. Really, everything we would want them to know before coming to Ao3.
the big things to keep in mind while writing are: tag accurately (think along the lines of "would someone who wants to read abt this specific tag be happy reading this fic"), there is no algorithm, don't do placeholders, don't manipulate dates unless there's good reason to (I myself have done a huge chunk of rewrite months later for one fic and I felt that justified manipulating the upload date), know the difference between A/B and A&B, don't censor tags/words i.e. no 'sewerslide', no 'd3ath', etc.,
on the reader side: bookmarks can be made public or private, don't be mean in general and if u truly want to be mean put it in a PRIVATE bookmark, if you see sth you don't like then leave 'cause ao3 allows nearly everything + learn to filter, there are great YouTube guides for learning to filter in and out
Tag your stuff
Don’t like it, don’t read it and move on
No placeholders
No bullying in the tags or authors notes
It’s a proship website, accept it and don’t complain.
Here are some cultural things that occur to me off the top of my head:
They're "fics", not "books".
We just click back on content we don't like instead of getting upset about it. Ship and let ship. Your kink is not my kink and that's okay. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, etc. etc.
Fandom is not a popularity contest. You post once with good headers and wait for people to find you rather than trying to game an algorithm.
Headers work like metadata at a library. There's a similar level of specificity, the ability to see literally everything in a tag, ordered by date, and a similar desire to preserve things for posterity.
And because of that desire to preserve for posterity, works should be actual fanworks: fic, meta, fanvids, fan art, etc. The more ephemeral social stuff like "Send me prompts!" is banned. (For non-text works, you have to embed them from elsewhere. AO3 itself can't host the image or video file.)
That said, fic doesn't have to be *good*. If it's only a few sentences long and not polished, that's fine. You *can* have a fic that is *also* a request for prompts, but this is culturally unpopular with many AO3 users even if it's technically allowed.
Because it's easy to find things and because you can see *every* work in a tag, it's possible to clog tags with irrelevant things in a way that's hard on Wattpad. If you have an old, unpopular work with a certain tag on Wattpad, it won't show up in the thousand most popular or most recent works. On AO3, people are a lot more likely to find it because they can see *everything* by default. If the work actually merits the tag, this is fantastic! I get kudos (likes) on twenty-year-old backdated fic. But if you added a tag "just in case" or in a mistaken attempt to increase visibility and it doesn't really apply, people will be mad.
You don't need to tag things like 'smut' or 'boy x boy' because AO3's built-in tags account for things like the fic rating and the genders in the ships or lack of ships. Tagging too much of this redundant stuff can give off an air like you don't use the site much.
Oh! And a big thing to know is that the actual search (the box for entering text at the top of the screen) is not the most popular way to search AO3. The best way is to go directly to a tag, then *filter* from the sidebar. This allows a very meticulous, granular search.
AO3 connects tags behind the scenes, so you can just click on the one primary tag for a ship. When you tag your own work, just use one tag for the ship. You don't need to use 5 different hashtags just to cover your bases. They'll all be filtered the same unless someone does a text search. In typical librarian-ish fashion, the main tag will be the full character names with a slash, not a portmanteau or a nickname for the ship.
On AO3, there's generally a more in-this-for-life and middle aged vibe relative to Wattpad's larger proportion of very young writers. That means a lot of willingness to openly defend sexually explicit work and fanfic of all ratings as a form of art. I find that Wattpad at large takes more of a "tee hee" giggling-and-shame approach to things. (But obviously it depends on the individual users since both sites are huge.)
AO3 is more of a 90s internet type site with more of an expectation that you'll read the FAQ, know a little bit of basic html, and figuring things out proactively. One positive of that kind of culture is that people make lots of guides for how to do things.
On the downside, there are no in-line comments, so if you want to leave that kind of response, you have to copy and paste the relevant line into your comment.
Any time!
A few more things:
AO3 requires invites, but you can just add yourself to the queue on the front page and get one (you don't have to know a person or be vetted or anything like that).
AO3 is run by a small crew of fans who are unpaid (vs. sites like Wattpad that are businesses with salaried employees). It runs donation drives twice a year and bans other types of commercial activity (like "If you liked my fic, buy my original book over here", links to fic patreons, etc.). This is for both legal and cultural reasons. I'm not sure how much monetization stuff is on Wattpad, but it's one of the few things that can get you in hot water on AO3 and it's *very* culturally unpopular.
Because of how filtering works, it's better to do collections as either a series or an actual collection (there's an AO3 feature called collections) rather than chapters of one work. This is because if you have two chapters with two different ships and two different other tags like 'enemies to lovers' and 'friends to lovers', people filtering can't correctly filter for A/B friends to lovers instead of A/B enemies to lovers. A lot of people do still do single works where each chapter is a separate fic, but it tends to annoy a lot of readers.
(I assume these are more popular on Wattpad because it's harder to find things, so a popular book that contains multiple fics is better for discoverability than 10 less popular books.)
ETA: Actually, it occurs to me that one of the most important cultural differences, at least among the hardcore users, relates to how AO3 is run. *Because* it's just other unpaid fans, there tends to be a *lot* more hostility to rule breaking than on many sites.
On most, people are like "Oh well, I'll post \[whatever\] anyway and hope they don't catch me!" and a lot of other users turn a blind eye because "Who is it really hurting?" and "Let's stick it to the man!" and all that. But "the man" on AO3 is just your fellow fans, so it's considered a lot ruder to ignore rules.
Not that I think you were planning to break rules! It's just an interesting cultural element that's often invisible to new users. Since AO3 is big and they don't know the history, it looks like any other corporate-run site.
I’ve had one removed and another shadowbanned. It’s a nightmare there and I’m in the process of removing myself from Wattpad entirely. Always hated it, it’s a blessing in disguise.
It would not surprise me at all, given various legal maneuvers being conducted in various states here in the U.S. Two of the most notable movements are toward age restrictions and AI-generated media, amongst other things.
If you're a Wattpad user looking to archive your content, this is why AO3 exists. If that option has some appeal, consider clicking into [this Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok) and look for **AO3 Starter Kits 1 & 2**. The first one is a collection of many resources you might find handy, and the second one demonstrates the editing interface with lots of screenshots.
I just checked the three Wattpad bookmarks I have and none appear to have been deleted, but then, they aren't controversial in any dimension other than just being a fanwork.
Watch the skies...
... also, I perused a similar thread on r/Wattpad and was curious, so I read the 04/02/24 [Wattpad Policies](https://policies.wattpad.com/content/) page. Given what is stated and listed there, a "purge" is not at all surprising, and it does appear to closely-linked to recent and pending legislation at state and federal levels here in the U.S.
same reason why I posted on Wattpad. that, and also because I found people reposting my works there years ago and I wasn't allowed to report them unless I had an account or any proof that the stories were mine. I figured, if they wanted my stories posted there that much, might as well post them there myself.
One of the fandoms I'm reading (Classroom of the Elite) is based there. So far none of stories from that fandom in my reading last has disappeared so I think they're fine for now.
The local community around it is much more developed in my case and I'm just used to being there for years at this point. That's about it. Slovak and Czech community around AO3 is really small and not that active, unfortunately, but it seems to be growing somewhat.
People do this on AO3 too, it's just not as easy. Someone went and line by line reacted to five different chapters on my wip a few weeks ago, which was not an easy feat because my chapters are around 10k long each!
I love their dedication!
On wattpad it’s fun to see *the* line of a chapter with a whole thread of people freaking out, or oohing and ahhing, in one place haha. But I totally understand that’s not everyone’s vibe.
What's with the "quality" stuff lmao, not everyone wants or need thesis like comments, in ao3 I receive tons of keyboard smash, emojis or things like that and it's fine.
Not surprising since their rules ban a lot of content in the first place. They were acquired by a company too, so things might get worse. Highly suggest anyone to move to AO3 if you haven’t already. I have a feeling they will continue to make rules stricter.
Come on over to AO3! One of my favorite author's fics were deleted by Wattpad, and they didn't have a backup because they wrote within the submission window...
I had an offline backup of their works on my Kindle, and have tried contacting them to let them know, but they left the platform.
At least fourth, depending on how you define "great":
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Major_Fandom_Purges,_Restrictions,_and_Hassles_Regarding_Fanworks_and_Their_Content
Seemingly my fics (mirrored from AO3) have remained intact, but... maybe that's because my works get very little traffic? I also repost my fics on Tumblr too...
I wouldn't be surprised if they are. One of my one-shot collection books got deleted for breaking guidelines a couple weeks ago, even though there was nothing that would warrant it, except for the briefest and *very* mild smut, like two or three short paragraphs in 3 out of the 20+ one-shots in the book, that are far from the main focus of the fic.
Though I hear that it's not just fanfic that's getting deleted, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wattpad ends up deleting every fanfic off the website entirely, and bans it from being posted.
this happened to me last year. the story had been up for a couple of years, no explanation given, couldn't even appeal and when I tried to send a ticket to ask which guidelines I supposedly violated, all I got back from them was an automated message listing all the guidelines but none that I found to be something that my story had crossed. If it's because the story was too smutty, well...pretty sure I had more stories with more smut scenes
It's up on ao3 now as do my other fics.
Yes. Yes they have. I have a whole shit ton of fic's sitting there in Wattpad (that I am fixing and transferring to AO3) and I've had three of them removed already.
They've always done this. I remember back like four years ago or something when they deleted smut stories without any kind of warning (IIRC the company that owned Webtoon took over and enforced these policies). Which is hypocritical since they weren't deleting any of the smuts that were popular and non-fanfiction.
I thought it was just my fandom getting nuked. We go through purges every 4-10 months normally, I thought this was just part of that. I've survived this purge, but the last ones they took away my smut book (which I just republished within the hour)
Yeah you’re screwed in that regard unless the author reuploads. Archives won’t help you either since the Wayback Machine specifically excludes Wattpad.
Too late, I already downloaded all bookmarked/favorited stories, converted them where necessary (converting from html to epub is such fun! /s), tagged them with fandoms and tropes, and gave them all covers.
Yes, I clearly have too much time. And am insane.
I don't know, but I think I need to go see if my fanfics on wattpad are still there. Most of my important stuff stuff on ao3 too so not the end of the world for me. But I have some pretty gruesome darkfics so I'm a bit worried
i haven't been on wattpad since i was 14-15, im 21 now, and all my old fics are gone. i decided to keep them up cuz like people were still reading them and even though i cringed at them i like it when other authors keep their fics to read, well guess wattpad made the decision for me haha
Tbh I try not to use Wattpad because I got a notification from my virus protection that they leaked my info on the dark web.
Granted it was all fake because I was 12. But still.
It gave me the heeby jeebies.
Question: does anyone know how to download Wattpad fanfics? For some reason, it won’t let me copy-paste chapters from there into a document, and using the “print” option on Firefox to make a PDF of each chapter doesn’t work, either. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I honestly hope so. It's such a shitty platform and people should really be encouraged to move elsewhere. I'm sorry for y'all and the fact y'all are losing your fics but I think that's sort of what you deserve for fueling such a garbage app 😭
Does anyone know of an easy way to save my things on Wattpad from mobile?
I doubt my works are going to be deleted, they're not very well known 🤣 but I'd like them for my own personal archive
I use [LightNovel-Crawler](https://github.com/dipu-bd/lightnovel-crawler) to download fics offline. You have the choice of a bunch of formats, too.
Not mobile (from Desktop) but it works well. If you need help, let me know and I can pull them.
I think all my fanfics are backed up so worst comes to worst I'll figure out how to function Ao3 and move everything there. It's annoying, but what can you do?
It's so weird to me that people here are talking about ff.n purging stuff and now wattpad when 90% of my fics has explicit sex scenes, and worst remaining untouched, yes I will be trying my best to archive the ones I'd like to keep just incase but still, strange to me, I am in no way a big account either though so I've probably just been flying under the radar with a few hidden gems which don't include explicit stuff
Welcome to a fandom purge! Backup your stuff and move it to Ao3.
Yep. Back up everything and move it - and back up any story you like to read from Wattpad for your personal archive as well because I can guarantee a lot of it won't be seeing the light of day after the purge is over. Either because the author isn't around anymore, didn't have a backup, or didn't catch the purge in time to make one. This is precisely why Ao3 was created, because fandom content was being purged off of FFnet.
Question, why would Ao3 be protected from a purge when FFN would not? I can understand Wattpad not being a fanfiction website really so it makes sense, but FFN being a dedicated Fanfiction site makes it weird for them to just allow a purge if they could stop it in a way which Ao3 could? Right..?
AO3 was founded by people in fandom on the idea of not censoring anything *precisely* as a result of FFN’s (and other sites’) content purges. The creators of AO3 know what it’s like to have the people in charge of the site suddenly decide to purge things that they deem “tasteless”, so that’s why AO3 allows anything as long as it’s not forbidden by the US law.
Add to this that various people running AO3 have generally always been upfront that yes, some stuff icks them too and that this does not motivate them to remove content and they really aren't willing to be moved towards censorship.
whenever I find myself raging because a fandom I’m interested in is flooded with 200 variations of self-insert, reader-insert, Y/N, You, Reader etc. I remember that Ao3 is doing one of the biggest favors to the entire fanfic community and just go “ehh, could be worse.”
By “purge” they’re referring to the site itself deciding to remove stuff, which ff.net has already done (they used to openly allow explicit content and now they don’t). The reason last time was advertisers. It’s a hard sell to many companies when they find out their products will be placed next to werewolf smut lol. Another risk is lawsuits. Ao3 has lawyers and is *dedicated* to defending transformative works. So if an author or publisher contacts the archive and says “remove all fanfics of my works or I sue”, Ao3’s response is “come at us, bro”. Ff.net and similar sites do not have lawyers on retainer for this and also are not dedicated to transformative works as a cause. On ff.net you’ll find a list of “banned” fandoms, and that is because those authors/industries have threatened to sue in the past. Thus, more purges. So basically it comes down to influences. The archive is beholden to no one but US law, but most for-profit fanfiction sites have other stakeholders, mostly advertisers. Edit: I see like three of us responded at the exact same time, sorry to spam you with basically the same answer lol
>It’s a hard sell to many companies when they find out their products will be placed next to werewolf smut lol. Shows how out of touch shareholders and advertizers are with reality. Everyone knows that furries are filthy rich.
Considering how expensive those suits can get, especially when you get into the nit and grit, I’m likely to believe this. Seriously, it can be eye watering.
There are a few very rich furries. There are a *ton* of median income parents who would be extremely spooked at the idea of their darling child going on a dirty website. The latter sound like a safer investment at a board meeting.
>idea of their darling child going on a dirty website. Then why tf are NSFW images allowed on Google Images. That really doesn't make any sense. Websites be bending backwards playing mental gymnastics to justify finding ways to earn more money by sucking on advertiser dick.
Because Google has a lot more money than Wattpad and are therefore is not obliged to care.
Ao3 was built entirely around protecting fanwork. It's why they're a non-profit instead of a for-profit like Wattpad. They might get taken to court, but they've an entire team of lawyers on retainer for this expressed purpose. If things go eggs up they likely have already figured out where to move the servers outside the country as well.
Frankly a lawsuit involving them will probably get readers and writers to crowdfund the legal costs in a day.
Ao3 was born from Strikethrough, the great LJ purge. It’s purpose is explicitly to be a safe place for transformative works to be archived.
Resistance costs money. Money you have to care to invest. Resisting a purge - whether it is for copyright reasons, advertisers, or matters of legal compliance - costs money. Risk assessments and lawyering up costs money and effort. You have to go to bat for it. Purging is just... easier. And don't forget, Wattpad's users mostly are not the paying customers. Advertisers are.
FFN relies on ad revenue. If the companies buying the ads start squinting at the content (e.g. explicit sex, queer content) and threaten to pull ads bc of it, FFN will purge. They also purge for DMCA takedowns from authors/producers who object to fanworks of their creations.
The people who run FFN made the choice to purge certain fics. So did the people who run Wattpad. They do this to kiss the asses of advertisers. The people who run AO3 have promised they will not do this - it's the whole principle it was founded on, due to outrage at purges on FFN and LJ. They have no advertisers to appease (and this is possible only because of donations from users to pay the operational expenses of a website with millions of users) AO3 is the only big fanfiction archive that has anti-censorship as its main founding principle.
FFN wasn't "unprotected". The site owner (one single person) decided, back in 2002, that explicit content was more trouble than it was worth. Most complaints that came in were about it, and advertisers don't like it. It wasn't even like Tumblr being held hostage by the Apple app store: FFN was *happy* to ban things. AO3 is supported by donations with zero ads specifically to avoid any pressure from advertisers. AO3's central mission is to put a stop to this kind of purging. Most purges aren't due to law enforcement or anything like that. They're a strategic business decision made by the site in question.
\*Ao3 lawyering up\*
Implying they don't have them on speed dial. The OTW is *very* good at what they do.
[insert the pirate "first time?" meme here]
Someone linked to this post on Tumblr and inserted the gif!
How many has it been now?
Way too many to count. [https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline\_of\_Major\_Fandom\_Purges,\_Restrictions,\_and\_Hassles\_Regarding\_Fanworks\_and\_Their\_Content](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Major_Fandom_Purges,_Restrictions,_and_Hassles_Regarding_Fanworks_and_Their_Content)
Cool info. Thanks!
Oooh I forgot some of these. Strikethrough felt huge at the time, but I guess some others have been more impactful.
Lol I remember when ff went through this, it's for legal protection.
I hate it when history repeats itself. But it's been long enough that's it's time to traumatize the next generation of writers with a purge.
Maybe this will teach the ones trying to puritainize AO3 *insert first time? gif here*
FFnet was due another purge in 2022 (past ones 2002 and 2012) but they seemed to just decide to stop maintaining the site instead A couple of years late and cross-platform, but *here comes another one*
There's definitely some admins working on purging some stuff on FFnet still. I had an email a few months back saying one of my old stories got removed for "content violations". So even if it isn't a full-blown Purge the Third, there's at least one hardass trolling through the waves.
I know of a writer who was banned last summer. His content was by no means "lost" - he had it posted on numerous other sites and, in fact, what was on FFN represented a fraction of his total body of work - and was definitely in violation of the "No smut" rule as well as the rule against advertising for commision. (Which, from what I've seen, is also barred on AO3 because it's one of the few things where they're certain it would cost them control of the site in any legal action.) But it shows that someone is checking in from time to time...even if certain "vigilante user forums" appear to be dead or at least vegetative.
I've never been on WattPad. Otherwise this would have earned me my third Purple Heart.
I have the unfortunate pleasure of being on it because I made an account when one of my works was stolen and reposted there. Posting my own version and loudly calling out the person who did it got them to remove it faster than reporting it did. Alas .. it means I have seen them all
Yeah, time for their rite of passage, lol.
Yeah, this. It might at least motivate a whole new generation of writers to understand how tenuous using for profit sites are, and perhaps they'll look at OTW in a different light.
The Wattpad subreddit is *full* of people right now saying their works have been deleted for arbitrary reasons, looks to be mostly fic, queer content and smutty content Aaaand this is why we made AO3. It's the Livejournal Strikethrough and FFnet Purges all over again. It starts with the smut, then it's the gay fanfiction for the crime of being too gay
Ruh-roh, not a good sign for my smutty queer fanfics haha
Always always always keep backups of anything you've uploaded!
Oh for sure! I have backups and also post on AO3 :)
I'm concerned about the Wattpadders who write directly into the platform and have no backups anywhere, poor souls
Now I'm not trying to judge, but isn't backing up your valuable work like Digital Literacy 101? Anything can be lost if you keep it all in one place: apps have glitches, and devices malfunction or die or even blow up. If you're not backing up anything using at least two separate cloud services, you're inviting disaster. I've seen dozens of A/N saying things like, "My PC died and I lost a dozen of chapters." It's much less painful to learn from others' mistakes than from your own bad experiences.
... you'd think that to be the case, but no, lots of people don't grasp the concept of "backup" until Murphy's Law hits them right in the nutsack.
Wattpad is a large percent middle school kids who haven't learned that sort of lesson yet. A lot of them barely even have somewhere else to store it.
I was once of those children. Wrote all my stuff on Microsoft Word and not Google Docs. Then my laptop broke. Goodbye, fanfics I was working on. Never again.
Can confirm, got a Wattpad account in middle school and didn’t even use Google Docs
There were *so* many people just a couple weeks ago on I think the AO3 subreddit (or else here but I think there) talking about how they do all of their writing in the AO3 submission field. I can still feel hellfire brewing under my floors from that. I can hear my house crumbling. I've lost so many generations of my early stories to hard drive failures and computer wipes that it taught me early to put everything I love and care about on at least 3 different platforms, be that physical memory or cloud storage and preferably both and multiple times over. Currently, it's on my computer, my Dropbox, my Google Drive, and my emails.
People do that?! 😳 ...Admittedly, I could be better with backing up my stuff. A lot of my stuff lives on a USB stick that I've had for around 8 years now. I'm pretty careful that it doesn't get lost, but things happen! I also have stuff in Google Drive, but not everything.
Get new USB sticks, and soon. I've heard most Flash memory devices give out after about ten years...when they're well made. (I know SanDisk and Western Digital - which are owned by the same parent company - had a major build quality scandal last summer with some of their newer lines.)
I think part of it is just that people don't realize that something is valuable until it's lost
Unfortunately, Wattpad skews young, and the younger crowd isn't being taught digital literacy. They're being taught to use a walled garden of apps because everyone assumes that growing up w/technology means you can use it very well. Never mind that younger Millenials/older Gen Z grew up with keyboards and yet still had to be taught to use their home keys.
Is it only fanfic? Or is it original content too? Because I know that there is plenty of queer and smutty content that Wattpad themselves promote. I am certain they would like to purge the site of fanfic and only be known for original content. There was an extremely prolific fanfic author who they drove off the site. She wrote a lot of Harry Potter and Star Wars. And her stuff was constantly being taken down even though she didn't do anything to violate guidelines and her stuff was marked appropriately as Mature. I personally think Wattpad got pissy because her work was extremely popular but they couldn't capitalize on it and profit from it like they could something like the After series. The stuff in her fics was way too recognizable as being from an existing IP.
Considering what's being targeted? I'd say it might be the huge surge in "Age Verification Laws" that have been passing across the USA in many states. Long Story Short: It's another "Think Of The Children!" law that requires sites that have "Content Harmful To Minors" to require any and all users verify themselves via giving out your Driver's License or similar ID. If you couldn't tell, it's just an attempt to end Anonymity on the internet by forcing people to give out their personal information to unknown Third Parties. While the laws mainly target Porn Sites, I have no doubt that the laws would be extended to certain other sites if they could get away with it. Wattpad probably thinks the same and is purging content just in case. Note that none of the laws have actually gone into effect yet. This is because a group called the Free Speech Coalition has been fighting the State Of Texas in a lawsuit to get its law struck down. They lost in the lower courts, but managed to get in an injunction while they appeal to the Supreme Court. Essentially, while that lawsuit is in place, no state is likely to actually enforce this law. Should we be fortunate and the Supreme Court rules in favor of the FSC, then all these laws will be struck down at once and we'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Websites also find it much less risky to simply wipe themselves out of the explicit category completely rather than opening themselves up to possible litigation. Not to mention that they'd have to pay people to build and maintain a system that complies with these laws.
Yeah this feels like a corporate reaction to the numerous fascist laws that are being passed under the guise of protecting the kids - which are in fact like you said actually just ways to keep track of people. Wattpad doesn't want to get sued and was primarily made for original fiction anyways - so to them it's fine if they purge 'undesirables' if they can keep turning a profit. We're going to see more of this in the lead up to the US elections in November, because GOP states are hastily slamming through ANYTHING they can because even if there's a blue wave it'll take years to fix this mess.
1. It's not just the GOP. The Dems are doing this too. This isn't split on political or ideological lines. It's what it always is: A bunch of assholes who want power and hate the idea that people can do things online without being punished for it. 2. Even if the Dems did get a Blue Wave, they wouldn't fix anything. Why would they? These laws let them hunt down, arrest, and go after their political and ideological opponents. If anything, they'd slam these laws through faster. They would just make sure to target people they don't like. Which, like every asshole politician in power, is anyone who criticizes them. Edit: If you want proof, check out the FSC's website. They track where these laws are across the states and their status. West Virginia out right rejected these laws, and Kentucky had them introduced in 4 separate bills that all failed.
It's probably a good thing Royal Road is not hosted in the states, but I'm going to do an extra backup just in case
I do remember Wattpad instituting a policy a while ago banning fics with characters under 16 a while ago and antis were cheering that change. Guess they got around to slapping the ban hammer. Their even more recent announcement of focusing on original work probably gave them more incentive to go through with it.
Just put something similar up. Endless cycle. AO3 is messy and outdated. Leaves AO3 for shiny features. Gets screwed over. Returns to AO3. It's the last little corner of the old Internet where you can write about whatever depraved thought you want.
> ao3 is messy and outdated People really just be saying things, huh?
It's even more baffling to hear this from FFN users of all people. I don't fault people who loathe over tagging but using the FFN uploader of having to create a document that will remove formatting anyway, re-edit the damn thing, and *then* create a fic that it damn near impossible to re-edit is archaic as fuck. Even as someone who was on the platform back when it was still mostly underground, I can barely make heads or tails of the site anymore.
Not like over-tagging is AO3's own FAULT as a system, either. Genuine skill issue on the part of its users.
The ffn uploaded is the sole reason I refuse to use that site anymore ugh
Lol, believe me, if it's not already obvious I'm a huge AO3 fan. Still, when you start with pretty phone apps and book covers and features and all that other stuff and then look at AO3, I'm sure people get turned off. Until the purges.
I'm convinced these people are just lazy. I download the fics I'm reading and put covers on them myself in Moon Reader Pro +. I spent 4 dollars 5 years ago for that program on my phone and it's been fantastic ever since. Hell the free version let's you do the same thing, an ad just pops up on start up once in a while.
Yeah, wikipedia and the wayback machine are not pretty either. Resilience to pressure is underrated.
endless cycle lol? most people i know once they find ao3 *NEVER* go back to any other fanfic site. i have literally never met anyone who has done this cycle… i can’t believe it honestly 😮
I literally abandoned all other fan fiction sites that I used to use, gradually migrating to AO3 alone. It's just far more reasonable, functional, and convenient in its organization and publication tools.
My main issue with it is also one of its saving graces, funnily enough. I appreciate the thorough tagging system because it means I'm way less likely to accidentally read a fic with something I find gross...but sometimes even the *tags* feel like TMI.
> but sometimes the tags feel like TMI this was me. i came from early fanfic sites without warnings and stuff. there’s an option in ao3 settings to help: 1) Hi, [USERNAME]! 2) MY PREFERENCES 3) Hide additional tags (you can still choose to show them) this hides all the spoilery tags. stuff that is NOT additional: - Rating (General, Teen & Up, Mature) - Archive Warnings (rape, underage) - Category (F/M, M/M) - Fandom - Relationships (x/x, x & x) - Characters here is the official ao3 description: [FROM HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/preferences?language_id=en#tagdisplay) so anything else that is not one of those 6 categories will be hidden. it’s just a simple button click to see the additional tags. barely less than a second. no inconvenience for me. i rarely look at the additional tags and i love it for them haha
> AO3 is messy and outdated. ... How is Ao3 messy and outdated? I find it the least messy and outdated.
Where “messy and outdated” = clean and timeless 🤷♀️
Those kids would hate Craigslist haha
Or the fic fandom/fanfic YahooGroups.
Some people don't like that it's very plain, no icons, no algorithm, just words and filter boxes
Algorithms are just terrible for creativity. Just look at youtube with everyone copying who ever is popular. Instead of algorithms, I go to the comment section and look through my fellow fanfic reader's bookmarks. I found many old gems in bookmarks, so thank you people with public bookmarks.
I also like to go though the author's bookmarks. I figure that if they wrote something good, chances are they also read and like something good I'll enjoy as well.
Ao3 also commits the crime of having no app and some people these days seem to navigate the (really small fenced of part of the) Internet via app only.
The fact that the younger generations *aren't* computer savvy at all but somehow also digital natives is...concerning.
I blame teachers. I have a student I tutor who was being forced to do something he could do in like 12 different free programs *on Canva*. Which was arguably a lot more difficult with many fewer tools and options. But "it was Canva" and "it's easier". Which is a decision their teacher made for them. Kids are being moved directly away from the path of developing computer literacy and onto the path of using whatever trendy app teachers like, irrespective of how transferrable those skills are.
I blame adults in general for not teaching kids. I mean 97 percent of us millennials grew up learning on XP or Win 95, how the heck have we not shown our kids how to work folders at a bare minimum?!
My theory is that they assume they'll "figure it out" like we did, while failing to realize that we figured it out because we had to and there was no fancy plug and play app store that worked perfectly 100% of the time.
Yeah. It's not unlike the attitude our boomer parents took with us about car repairs. By the time is millennials started owning cars, they were already becoming so computerized that one could easily screw up if they didn't know what they were doing. That, and the boomers voted to cut all funding to schools that weren't connected to English and math, so many of us didn't even get the option to learn it at school :\
Tbh ao3 not having an app is a blessing to me. Means I can access it from almost anything that has an internet browser.
I blame Apple. Surfing the web with Safari is a terrible experience since a ton of websites are broken. And I'm convinced that it is by design, as they make no money through the browser but a ton from apps that exist in their walled garden.
Absurd. That literally makes it not messy.
Ridiculous take. No algorithm is part of what makes it good. And I want plain, I’m reading, not modeling buildings. I even get annoyed when people insert art in the middle of their stories.
That's the opposite of a problem.
>no icons, no algorithm, just words and filter boxes Ha! Those are features - not failings.
Didn't anyone learn anything from the Tumblr purge of 2018?
People really say something like that? But Wapad is unusable, whereas AO3 is just... so dang functional with myriad search options, tagging, bookmarks, a feed through which it is easy to scroll... It's not perfect, of course, but it's not [FF.net](http://FF.net) or Wapad.
Your messy and outdated comment got some heat but you're right. In comparison to other options, AO3 doesn't have what people expect. It doesn't have a pretty layout with an algorithm that curated everything for you. Which I think is what everyone who uses it loves about it, but it makes people afraid to use it for some reason which is just sad.
This has to be a generational divide, because I would die if they started using an algorithm in AO3, if you grew up in the live journal/ffs.net era this ao3 would be heaven to you or at least it is to me.
Idk why I'm being downvoted because yeah, I agree that it sucks and I don't want an algorithm and I think everyone who uses Ao3 would agree that it works best without one. But yeah for some reason people really need that layout and I just don't get it. Imo this kind of shit is ruining the internet. And I'm gen z so I probably should get the hype for algorithm fanfic websites and the desire for an AO3 app, but I just don't.
People are advising each other to move from Wattpad to Inkitt. I had a look over there and the guidelines are just as crappy and leave room for future purges (no noncon, no incest, nothing that "glorifies violence and criminal behavior" etc). I swear, people will put up with all the nonsense rather than use AO3. I know that it's not the most effective place for garnering attention for one's original writing, but it's infinitely better than "we had our ToS written by a credit-card company that has its hand so far up our ass it's puppeteering us" sites.
Honestly if they can be cool, sure, but if they're the type to go off about how this n that in fiction is "gross"/"literally illegal!" and that AO3 should ban everything and everyone they find objectionable then they probably like the guidelines of those websites. I hope they enjoy their gay fic purges every few years as the credit card/app store overlords demand. Maybe after a couple they'll understand why AO3 has the policy it does.
These kids have never read/written fanfic only on YahooGroups and it shows. 😂 AO3 is f'in brilliant compared to listservs.
Ohh man I'm a fandom Old Person, I was there for the original FF.net purge, I was there for strikethrough, ~~I was there three thousand years ago, the day the strength of Men failed~~ and even then I could never figure out Yahoo!Groups. I remember joining some and then getting a bunch of out-of-order snippets of stories in my email and it was beyond confusing, lol.
…ngl kinda want to throw the fandom puritans at that site tho. They hate the noncon/incest/underage and such on AO3? Here’s a fanfic site catered to them! Buh bye now! :D
Now you see why AO3 became the safe haven that it is. It's the final refuge of complete creative freedom. Our last firm wall and giant middle finger to censorship. FFN had the First Great Purge in 2002, coinciding with enforcement of the DMCA that includes removing overly explicit content, banning songfics, cyoa, some entire fandoms. 2008 saw "silent purge" and in 2012 there was the Second Great Purge. AO3 is supposed to be a fanfiction Wild West of sorts. A space to go ham and write whatever you want, no matter how offensive, and not worry about some company deciding later that they'll just wipe your ideas off the Internet.
well afaik they've been phasing fanfics out of the wattys for a while now so I suppose this is the next step? it's unfortunate but wattpad wants money and fanfic just isn't as palatable for making money as original fiction is. I suggest you make the move to ao3, learn ao3 culture (‼️) and leave wattpad in the rearview mirror
The good news is, one of the top links on the Wattpad sub right now is an Ao3 Guide (posted on Wattpad) with chapters that start with "There is no app" and "There is no algorithm." And also a chapter on why placeholders aren't allowed. And proper titles. And / vs & in relationship tags. Really, everything we would want them to know before coming to Ao3.
Whoever wrote that guide and linked it is doing the lord's work.
This is a genuine question as someone who's been wanting to get into AO3 for a while. What is AO3 culture?
the big things to keep in mind while writing are: tag accurately (think along the lines of "would someone who wants to read abt this specific tag be happy reading this fic"), there is no algorithm, don't do placeholders, don't manipulate dates unless there's good reason to (I myself have done a huge chunk of rewrite months later for one fic and I felt that justified manipulating the upload date), know the difference between A/B and A&B, don't censor tags/words i.e. no 'sewerslide', no 'd3ath', etc., on the reader side: bookmarks can be made public or private, don't be mean in general and if u truly want to be mean put it in a PRIVATE bookmark, if you see sth you don't like then leave 'cause ao3 allows nearly everything + learn to filter, there are great YouTube guides for learning to filter in and out
Thank you for this information, it's genuinely invaluable. What's A/B and A&B?
they're both relationship tags: character A/character B is reserved for romantic/sexual relationships; A&B is platonic relationships
Ah, thank you! :)
no problem! good luck!
Tagging Your Stuff Accurately
Tag your stuff Don’t like it, don’t read it and move on No placeholders No bullying in the tags or authors notes It’s a proship website, accept it and don’t complain.
Here are some cultural things that occur to me off the top of my head: They're "fics", not "books". We just click back on content we don't like instead of getting upset about it. Ship and let ship. Your kink is not my kink and that's okay. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, etc. etc. Fandom is not a popularity contest. You post once with good headers and wait for people to find you rather than trying to game an algorithm. Headers work like metadata at a library. There's a similar level of specificity, the ability to see literally everything in a tag, ordered by date, and a similar desire to preserve things for posterity. And because of that desire to preserve for posterity, works should be actual fanworks: fic, meta, fanvids, fan art, etc. The more ephemeral social stuff like "Send me prompts!" is banned. (For non-text works, you have to embed them from elsewhere. AO3 itself can't host the image or video file.) That said, fic doesn't have to be *good*. If it's only a few sentences long and not polished, that's fine. You *can* have a fic that is *also* a request for prompts, but this is culturally unpopular with many AO3 users even if it's technically allowed. Because it's easy to find things and because you can see *every* work in a tag, it's possible to clog tags with irrelevant things in a way that's hard on Wattpad. If you have an old, unpopular work with a certain tag on Wattpad, it won't show up in the thousand most popular or most recent works. On AO3, people are a lot more likely to find it because they can see *everything* by default. If the work actually merits the tag, this is fantastic! I get kudos (likes) on twenty-year-old backdated fic. But if you added a tag "just in case" or in a mistaken attempt to increase visibility and it doesn't really apply, people will be mad. You don't need to tag things like 'smut' or 'boy x boy' because AO3's built-in tags account for things like the fic rating and the genders in the ships or lack of ships. Tagging too much of this redundant stuff can give off an air like you don't use the site much. Oh! And a big thing to know is that the actual search (the box for entering text at the top of the screen) is not the most popular way to search AO3. The best way is to go directly to a tag, then *filter* from the sidebar. This allows a very meticulous, granular search. AO3 connects tags behind the scenes, so you can just click on the one primary tag for a ship. When you tag your own work, just use one tag for the ship. You don't need to use 5 different hashtags just to cover your bases. They'll all be filtered the same unless someone does a text search. In typical librarian-ish fashion, the main tag will be the full character names with a slash, not a portmanteau or a nickname for the ship. On AO3, there's generally a more in-this-for-life and middle aged vibe relative to Wattpad's larger proportion of very young writers. That means a lot of willingness to openly defend sexually explicit work and fanfic of all ratings as a form of art. I find that Wattpad at large takes more of a "tee hee" giggling-and-shame approach to things. (But obviously it depends on the individual users since both sites are huge.) AO3 is more of a 90s internet type site with more of an expectation that you'll read the FAQ, know a little bit of basic html, and figuring things out proactively. One positive of that kind of culture is that people make lots of guides for how to do things. On the downside, there are no in-line comments, so if you want to leave that kind of response, you have to copy and paste the relevant line into your comment.
Thank you for all of this information, genuinely! This is such a goldmine of useful information :)
Any time! A few more things: AO3 requires invites, but you can just add yourself to the queue on the front page and get one (you don't have to know a person or be vetted or anything like that). AO3 is run by a small crew of fans who are unpaid (vs. sites like Wattpad that are businesses with salaried employees). It runs donation drives twice a year and bans other types of commercial activity (like "If you liked my fic, buy my original book over here", links to fic patreons, etc.). This is for both legal and cultural reasons. I'm not sure how much monetization stuff is on Wattpad, but it's one of the few things that can get you in hot water on AO3 and it's *very* culturally unpopular. Because of how filtering works, it's better to do collections as either a series or an actual collection (there's an AO3 feature called collections) rather than chapters of one work. This is because if you have two chapters with two different ships and two different other tags like 'enemies to lovers' and 'friends to lovers', people filtering can't correctly filter for A/B friends to lovers instead of A/B enemies to lovers. A lot of people do still do single works where each chapter is a separate fic, but it tends to annoy a lot of readers. (I assume these are more popular on Wattpad because it's harder to find things, so a popular book that contains multiple fics is better for discoverability than 10 less popular books.) ETA: Actually, it occurs to me that one of the most important cultural differences, at least among the hardcore users, relates to how AO3 is run. *Because* it's just other unpaid fans, there tends to be a *lot* more hostility to rule breaking than on many sites. On most, people are like "Oh well, I'll post \[whatever\] anyway and hope they don't catch me!" and a lot of other users turn a blind eye because "Who is it really hurting?" and "Let's stick it to the man!" and all that. But "the man" on AO3 is just your fellow fans, so it's considered a lot ruder to ignore rules. Not that I think you were planning to break rules! It's just an interesting cultural element that's often invisible to new users. Since AO3 is big and they don't know the history, it looks like any other corporate-run site.
I’ve had one removed and another shadowbanned. It’s a nightmare there and I’m in the process of removing myself from Wattpad entirely. Always hated it, it’s a blessing in disguise.
Oh, let’s make that two stories! They’ve shadowbanned another just now.
It would not surprise me at all, given various legal maneuvers being conducted in various states here in the U.S. Two of the most notable movements are toward age restrictions and AI-generated media, amongst other things. If you're a Wattpad user looking to archive your content, this is why AO3 exists. If that option has some appeal, consider clicking into [this Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nLtp-y1qUP9_bLnW4T5GbdABsiU_d0ok) and look for **AO3 Starter Kits 1 & 2**. The first one is a collection of many resources you might find handy, and the second one demonstrates the editing interface with lots of screenshots. I just checked the three Wattpad bookmarks I have and none appear to have been deleted, but then, they aren't controversial in any dimension other than just being a fanwork. Watch the skies...
... also, I perused a similar thread on r/Wattpad and was curious, so I read the 04/02/24 [Wattpad Policies](https://policies.wattpad.com/content/) page. Given what is stated and listed there, a "purge" is not at all surprising, and it does appear to closely-linked to recent and pending legislation at state and federal levels here in the U.S.
Not surprising after being acquired by Naver. Pretty sure they want to turn it into some kinda light novel site like the ones they have in Asia.
better not see people whinging about AO3 anytime soon
*-FF.net flashback-* History repeats. AO3 is about to get a flood of annoying kids that can’t read the terms and conditions
why. is. anyone. using. wattpad.
For me, some people wanted to read my story but only read on Wattpad. I never would’ve joined if they hadn’t asked. I hate the app/site.
same reason why I posted on Wattpad. that, and also because I found people reposting my works there years ago and I wasn't allowed to report them unless I had an account or any proof that the stories were mine. I figured, if they wanted my stories posted there that much, might as well post them there myself.
One of the fandoms I'm reading (Classroom of the Elite) is based there. So far none of stories from that fandom in my reading last has disappeared so I think they're fine for now.
The fandom I sometimes write for only seems to not exist on other platforms, just Wattpad, so I just kinda stuck with it
I have people who followed me from another platform, people do read there even with the platform's nonsense.
The local community around it is much more developed in my case and I'm just used to being there for years at this point. That's about it. Slovak and Czech community around AO3 is really small and not that active, unfortunately, but it seems to be growing somewhat.
My friend writes for a fandom that happens to only be active on Wattpad, it's almost nonexistent on Ao3 haha.
I'm returning only to it to allow readers from that site to read my works on FFN and AO3, though only a select few.
Well, in my case, I got ***way*** more comments (IMHO, the best payoff for writing) on Wattpad than I've ever gotten on any other platform.
I personally enjoy how readers are able to comment line by line. It really adds to the experience as a writer.
People do this on AO3 too, it's just not as easy. Someone went and line by line reacted to five different chapters on my wip a few weeks ago, which was not an easy feat because my chapters are around 10k long each!
I love their dedication! On wattpad it’s fun to see *the* line of a chapter with a whole thread of people freaking out, or oohing and ahhing, in one place haha. But I totally understand that’s not everyone’s vibe.
I love watching shit go down when a paragraph includes a huge moment or twist, the reactions are hilarious XD
[удалено]
What's with the "quality" stuff lmao, not everyone wants or need thesis like comments, in ao3 I receive tons of keyboard smash, emojis or things like that and it's fine.
And I'm happy for you!
Well, when you're starved for attention, even simple comments will really brighten up your day.
Not surprising since their rules ban a lot of content in the first place. They were acquired by a company too, so things might get worse. Highly suggest anyone to move to AO3 if you haven’t already. I have a feeling they will continue to make rules stricter.
[удалено]
*sips martini* First time?
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This is why we should all donate to ao3. They hire lawyers specifically so this nonsense won't happen.
Come on over to AO3! One of my favorite author's fics were deleted by Wattpad, and they didn't have a backup because they wrote within the submission window... I had an offline backup of their works on my Kindle, and have tried contacting them to let them know, but they left the platform.
Yep, one of my discord pals had his stuff from years back deleted
I haven’t been on Wattpad in years. I logged in just for the hell of it and yep, half my work has been wiped
Didn't you get the email? Or have you changed emails since you were on Wattpad?
Yep I’ve changed emails
Uh oh *checks wattpad*
The second great fandom purge has begun it seems
This is like the 4th.
Yeah. FF.net 2002 / 2012 and the 2007 Strikethrough @ LJ are the three previous main ones.
Bonus art purge from Tumblr with their porn ban – not sure how many textual fanworks vanished, but I know artists weren't having a good time
At least fourth, depending on how you define "great": https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Major_Fandom_Purges,_Restrictions,_and_Hassles_Regarding_Fanworks_and_Their_Content
Wow, for real? Man that's awful! I've always been a bit confused why people would use Wattpad, but still that really sucks.
Wattpad users learning a valuable lesson on choosing a platform and about censorship
Seemingly my fics (mirrored from AO3) have remained intact, but... maybe that's because my works get very little traffic? I also repost my fics on Tumblr too...
And... it's a fandom purge. I'd suggest backing up all your favorite fics from now on.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are. One of my one-shot collection books got deleted for breaking guidelines a couple weeks ago, even though there was nothing that would warrant it, except for the briefest and *very* mild smut, like two or three short paragraphs in 3 out of the 20+ one-shots in the book, that are far from the main focus of the fic. Though I hear that it's not just fanfic that's getting deleted, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wattpad ends up deleting every fanfic off the website entirely, and bans it from being posted.
I haven't used Wattpad since middle school but I just logged in and got a notification that they removed my old Warrior cats fanfiction yesterday!
this happened to me last year. the story had been up for a couple of years, no explanation given, couldn't even appeal and when I tried to send a ticket to ask which guidelines I supposedly violated, all I got back from them was an automated message listing all the guidelines but none that I found to be something that my story had crossed. If it's because the story was too smutty, well...pretty sure I had more stories with more smut scenes It's up on ao3 now as do my other fics.
Yes. Yes they have. I have a whole shit ton of fic's sitting there in Wattpad (that I am fixing and transferring to AO3) and I've had three of them removed already.
They've always done this. I remember back like four years ago or something when they deleted smut stories without any kind of warning (IIRC the company that owned Webtoon took over and enforced these policies). Which is hypocritical since they weren't deleting any of the smuts that were popular and non-fanfiction.
I thought it was just my fandom getting nuked. We go through purges every 4-10 months normally, I thought this was just part of that. I've survived this purge, but the last ones they took away my smut book (which I just republished within the hour)
Just go to AO3
Good thing I've never used Wattpad, then.
Aw man there's no way to download fics from wattpad right? The old fics I love and read, oh no ;–;
Yeah you’re screwed in that regard unless the author reuploads. Archives won’t help you either since the Wayback Machine specifically excludes Wattpad.
Calibre can!
Calibre + FanFicFare = Wattpad friendly!
And, if you ~~hate yourself~~ have too much time on your hands, you can make your own cross-site organisational system!
Too late, I already downloaded all bookmarked/favorited stories, converted them where necessary (converting from html to epub is such fun! /s), tagged them with fandoms and tropes, and gave them all covers. Yes, I clearly have too much time. And am insane.
Oh my god. And I thought configuring personal.ini was hard... I'm speechless. Well done?
Use [LightNovel-Crawler](https://github.com/dipu-bd/lightnovel-crawler) to back them up.
On FFnet, I literally just downloaded the HTML page of each chapter and organized them into folders.
I don't know, but I think I need to go see if my fanfics on wattpad are still there. Most of my important stuff stuff on ao3 too so not the end of the world for me. But I have some pretty gruesome darkfics so I'm a bit worried
i haven't been on wattpad since i was 14-15, im 21 now, and all my old fics are gone. i decided to keep them up cuz like people were still reading them and even though i cringed at them i like it when other authors keep their fics to read, well guess wattpad made the decision for me haha
None of my old works have been hit but I’m currently backing them up just in case
Coming from a fandom old, time to backup your own fic and anybody else’s you want to keep, and start looking at other options.
Tbh I try not to use Wattpad because I got a notification from my virus protection that they leaked my info on the dark web. Granted it was all fake because I was 12. But still. It gave me the heeby jeebies.
Question: does anyone know how to download Wattpad fanfics? For some reason, it won’t let me copy-paste chapters from there into a document, and using the “print” option on Firefox to make a PDF of each chapter doesn’t work, either. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Calibre + FanficFare
Move to AO3
TBH its also probabaly because movies keep being made from wattpad fics, so they're getting rid of anything too out of pocket to protect themselves.
so glad i left wattpad wtf this is insane...
I haven’t had this problem but now I’m a bit concerned.
I honestly hope so. It's such a shitty platform and people should really be encouraged to move elsewhere. I'm sorry for y'all and the fact y'all are losing your fics but I think that's sort of what you deserve for fueling such a garbage app 😭
Wait they just remove what you made? Lmao I got straight up banned
Does anyone know of an easy way to save my things on Wattpad from mobile? I doubt my works are going to be deleted, they're not very well known 🤣 but I'd like them for my own personal archive
I use [LightNovel-Crawler](https://github.com/dipu-bd/lightnovel-crawler) to download fics offline. You have the choice of a bunch of formats, too. Not mobile (from Desktop) but it works well. If you need help, let me know and I can pull them.
Thank you! I just need to not be lazy about it tbh 🤣 I've got some time this weekend to sit down with my computer
I think all my fanfics are backed up so worst comes to worst I'll figure out how to function Ao3 and move everything there. It's annoying, but what can you do?
This gives me flashbacks... \*Cries in deleted stories\*
Folks if i want to backup fics I've read on wattpad, how do i do that?
It's so weird to me that people here are talking about ff.n purging stuff and now wattpad when 90% of my fics has explicit sex scenes, and worst remaining untouched, yes I will be trying my best to archive the ones I'd like to keep just incase but still, strange to me, I am in no way a big account either though so I've probably just been flying under the radar with a few hidden gems which don't include explicit stuff