Basically the smut has to be part of the narrative and not just porn lol: Strictly prohibit pure erotica, pornography, and content written solely for sexual arousal.
Which caused a migration of Wattpad smut fans to move however they did not expect to see TRUE ANTI-CENSORSHIP fanfic content of darker NSFW tags.
Basically updated their TOS so they can ban any smut or nsfw content but the wording is so vague that they can excuse themselves to ban anything that "glorifies nsfw"
So from what I understand, what people have figured out is that Wattpad users are the ones searching for weird crap, but don’t like acknowledging what they’re reading. On Wattpad they’d read something like “sold to one direction”, but on ao3 that would have tags like “human trafficking”, “non-consent”, and “Stockholm syndrome”. It’s properly tagged, and Wattpad users migrating to ao3 are mad that they have to come to terms with the fact that they’ve been romanticizing messed up stuff the most.
Big, big handful of them weren't actually interested in the smut or anything, they were just trying to stay on the right side of the debate.
Unfortunately for the kids leaving Wattpad, a lot of kids do find porn pretty gross, and AO3 has some real freak shit (non-derogatory). AO3 doesn't hold your hand to show you how to block tags you hate but it DOES make you click "yeah I'm 18 show me freak shit" before you read an adult-rated fic so the complaining is more an admittance to being a fuckup than anything on the authors, if it's any condolence
There's also the fact that sometimes authors just don't bother properly tagging their work or create some bs tag that just slips past off your blacklist, so even if you blacklist a lot of tag, the chance of still seeing smut of varying degree is still high.
And then also people just not tagging their fics properly, so even if you do filter out tags, there’s still a few left.
And also the inverse where there’s way too many fucking overly specific tags, so I can filter out like thirty different types of smut and still have some obscure sex tag left.
Do not read unrated fics, stick to Gen and Teen if you want sfw fics. I don't find that unintuitive.
Edit: to the people downvoting, would you take a kid to see an unrated movie and then complain there are things inappropriate for children in them? You treat every unrated movie like an R or NC-17, you treat every gun like it's loaded, and you treat every unrated fic as a M or E.
No it doesn't, not unilaterally like it does for sexual content. There are plenty of Gen/Teen fics with the Graphic Depictions of Violence warning. I literally checked and there are *74,512 for general audiences alone. This is a complaint that very much seems to be less "the platform is actually hard to use in general" and more "I'm not used to this system so it seems hard to me."
FF.net has a better sorting system, unfortunately the Site as a whole is basically rotting at this point with zero updates to fix the many other bugs and issues it has.
One major issue is the fact that the App just outright refuses to update some stories
The main, real issue on AO3 is the lack proper perma-blocking tags I don't like. Look, on rule34, I can go into my accounting settings and blacklist tags for porn I don't like without issue. I can then search up stuff to my liking without wasting time using -(TAG) feature.
AO3 does not have that. I always have to manually add the tags I don't want into to the exclude bar. It's annoying. Is it hard to add such an option? Any reason it doesn't exist?
Banning that would also lead to people wishing for the ban of subreddits that feature death, gore and drugs because its also problematic content.
Don't like Loli Shota shit myself but I fucking know its just gonna slope down into a massive argument that leads to a youtube video with the tile "[insert name] controvery on reddit is insane/weird" shit.
Edit: I meant problematic content posted on other subs like PublicFreakout or shit.
dude im just asking for at least an article or blog post that can confirm, forgive me for not wanting to accuse a site of something that horrid because of one reddit comment
Thank you, next time lead with that instead of calling me a weirdo outright
(also very weird line to draw by that admin "oh yea you can have real people in horrific situations but if you ask for a donation you're literally hitler")
idk what they expect when they go from the Hell land of Overcensorship to the Hell Land of Zero Moderation
though I will say Ao3 def has a problem with the report button existing when moderation doesn't exist + allowing smut written about REAL children on the site. The fact users got really racist when a Chinese mod suggested they moderate that was fucking insane.
You are welcome to stick to Fanfiction.net. Or are you one of those people who cant help but bitch about things they look up themselves? You do know report button is for reporting non-transformative works, right? You do know what an ARCHIVE does?
how is "I think people sharing sexual fantasies about real child actors [not characters played by them] is a nasty thing to allow and I don't like how racist users get" controversial, hello? I USE ao3 and block shit accordingly you moron, doesn't mean it's a perfect place.
Also I know, that report button FOR non-transformative works doesn't do shit. Nor for fics that target specifically -you-. I pray to GOD you never have to deal with someone making a psycosexual fic about you because you refused to date them like I have lol
The internet was a better place when there was little to no censorship. Getting spooked by bad stuff occasionally was better than having Visa dictate whatever gets to stay. Thats my position, i hope Ao3 never changes it.
Btw i did have porn made of me. I rolled my eyes at it and that was all
I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm disgusted but fine with people making shit about fictional kids as long as they tag their shit properly [which I see people NOT do an annoying amount]. Censorship suck dick and every time I see "no booby allowed. This is so unwholesome Not Child Friendly" I rip my jaw off. Tumblr was a testing ground and I still get "ohh this is too bad for tumblr :{" nonsense.
But I will say there's a line between that bullshit and events like a grown man in his 30's being allowed to post his sexual fantasy of a real child with moderators that refuse to do anything when the parent of the child wants it taken down.
Also lucky you, if only every victim of harassment cared as little as you /s
Ao3 admins when you aks them to remove the fic about children getting raped which has no artistic value beyond people who are into children gooning instead of doing nothing all day
Is it? That was what I believed as well but a couple people in this posts comments have seemingly posted evidence of it not being taken down, though I could be wrong obviously
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