Wattpad wouldn’t survive the canonical porn without plot tag on AO3 😭 But in all seriousness this isn’t new. Wattpad has always been very pro censorship and a lot of authors have had their works removed with no warning before, so this looks to me like same old rules just even more strict than before? And don’t get me started on the ads that have been flooding the site for years, unless you subscribe to an ad-free Wattpad premium where you won’t get ads as long as you pay, but your works will still get removed if it’s too spicy or taboo and someone reports it. This is why we love AO3
For anyone who doesn't know, this is why AO3 was started. Pre-AO3, FFnet reigned supreme as the fanfic site. But calls for censorship grew, and eventually, in order to make the site more kid friendly (and advertiser friendly!), they changed the rules over what could be posted, leading to two infamous mass purges of fics. Some of those fics had been up for years, and had been posted long before the rule change, meaning the authors were gone or were given no warning. It also wasn't entirely clear what constituted 'adult' fics versus 'mature' ones. Some authors had fics taken down despite having no adult content in their fics, just bad language (which supposedly WAS allowed under mature fics). But hey, someone's bad language is another person's obscene, right? That's not counting all the other things FFNet decided to ban - from CYOA fics to songfics - or the Strikethrough/Boldthrough purges at Livejournal that hit fan communities in a similar way at around the same time.
This is what AO3 is designed to prevent.
This is what AO3 is here for.
You will never have to worry about middle of the night fic purges.
Censorship.
Purity culture cults and advertiser tantrums.
Your fic stays, until you yourself take it down.
As it should be.
