#I'm also so very tired of this new rise in anti-sex rhetoric and puritanical talking points being used to justify why our work is '''bad'''

[jplupine]

So I've been on Wattpad for about a decade now and seen several eras of the platform as it has grown and evolved. I joined when Wattpad was known as The place for werewolf romance and stayed, reading and eventually posting my own writing as well.

However, since Wattpad got bought out by Naver [Webtoon's parent company] it has become increasingly more hostile to writers who create 18+/queer works. And it's very hypocritical when most of the stories they advertise on their home page are 18+ stories ranging from cute feel-goods to dark romances. They profit off 18+ stories while at the same time having so many rules around it that even when you don't break TOS, their auto mod system still might take down your work while leaving up other works that break TOS every other paragraph. It's inconsistent moderation with little ability for writers to recover their work or appeal the flags/bans without getting an automated response.

Wattpad allows 18+ stories + sex scenes- so long as there's also plot. What's the ratio? Who knows, good luck. They have a toggle that hides 18+ stories from users that are 17 and under [so long as they didn't lie about their age] which adds to this idiocy- why have the toggle, the tags, the tools for adults to create adult works but treat us like children who can't distinguish fiction from reality? We know the dark romance fiction is not modeling healthy relationships we should replicate in real life. We Know. We also know sex with slashers or monsters is something to keep in fantasies- I've been reading slasher/monster smut for a very long time and it has not turned me into a sex criminal. They must be shocked.

And back to the hypocrisy- Wattpad has ads like these, showing they are fully aware of the audience the authors on their platform bring in, but still won't listen to those very same authors when their inconsistent moderation and puritan rules drive people away or make us lose years of hard work in an instant.

But sure, us grown ass adults need our hands held and eyes shielded from the 'icky' sex that is also advertised on the front page. 'Steamy' this, 'passion' that, suggestive posing and alluding hints- We're not ignorant to what this all means. My hope is they pull their heads out of their asses and let writers write. They already have the 18+ warning toggle and the built in function to allow for filtering these out or including them in search- let people fuckin use them.

[haru-kuneko]

Basically, Wattpad is becoming like YouTube where they're so inconsistent with what exactly is not allowed but also you get bombarded with obviously suggestive stories on their home page. This is why a lot of my novels never go past the 18+ rating (they might as well pass as Scholastic books but for teens and adults).

Also, didn't they have a separate platform called Yonder? Why can't they turn it into a separate app for mature novels?

May I add that it's not just the gay and sexual stuff but also anything that talks about violence, drugs, mental health, and politics regardless if done in a sensible way. I once knew a young writer who got reported and almost banned from the platform because someone didn't like how she expressed herself through her writing (like this rando thought the writer was endangering herself and everybody else around her) but her work was rather tame.

So I've been on Wattpad for about a decade now and seen several eras of the platform as it has grown and evolved. I joined when Wattpad was known as The place for werewolf romance and stayed, reading and eventually posting my own writing as well.

However, since Wattpad got bought out by Naver [Webtoon's parent company] it has become increasingly more hostile to writers who create 18+/queer works. And it's very hypocritical when most of the stories they advertise on their home page are 18+ stories ranging from cute feel-goods to dark romances. They profit off 18+ stories while at the same time having so many rules around it that even when you don't break TOS, their auto mod system still might take down your work while leaving up other works that break TOS every other paragraph. It's inconsistent moderation with little ability for writers to recover their work or appeal the flags/bans without getting an automated response.

Wattpad allows 18+ stories + sex scenes- so long as there's also plot. What's the ratio? Who knows, good luck. They have a toggle that hides 18+ stories from users that are 17 and under [so long as they didn't lie about their age] which adds to this idiocy- why have the toggle, the tags, the tools for adults to create adult works but treat us like children who can't distinguish fiction from reality? We know the dark romance fiction is not modeling healthy relationships we should replicate in real life. We Know. We also know sex with slashers or monsters is something to keep in fantasies- I've been reading slasher/monster smut for a very long time and it has not turned me into a sex criminal. They must be shocked.

And back to the hypocrisy- Wattpad has ads like these, showing they are fully aware of the audience the authors on their platform bring in, but still won't listen to those very same authors when their inconsistent moderation and puritan rules drive people away or make us lose years of hard work in an instant.

But sure, us grown ass adults need our hands held and eyes shielded from the 'icky' sex that is also advertised on the front page. 'Steamy' this, 'passion' that, suggestive posing and alluding hints- We're not ignorant to what this all means. My hope is they pull their heads out of their asses and let writers write. They already have the 18+ warning toggle and the built in function to allow for filtering these out or including them in search- let people fuckin use them.