Is Wattpad Banning Smut? The Company Says No, But Creators Are Concerned

Queer smut lovers everywhere, many of whom likely developed their sexual identities by reading erotic fan fiction on Wattpad, were sent into a panic this week after the online publishing platform updated its terms and conditions, leading some to believe it would be banning sexual content. For those unfamiliar, this would be equivalent to the burning of the Library of Alexandria for internet smut.The panic over the possibility of Wattpad getting sanitized prompted several writers to post about their plans to move their erotic content over to Archive of Our Own, known colloquially as AO3, another fan fiction site born in the mid-2000s. But despite the widely circulated claim that Wattpad would be banning smut that made the rounds earlier this month, Fast Company reported that the platform has not banned explicit stories. Rather, the platform says it has only clarified existing policies. “We recently updated some of the language in our Content Guidelines to make our policies clearer and easier to understand, adding more specificity about what has always been allowed and not allowed on our platform,” a Wattpad spokesperson told Fast Company. “Our policies, content categories, and how we moderate have not changed.”The guidelines instead now state that while “explicit sexual scenes between consenting adults” and “sexual content that supports the story” are allowed, stories that contain “pornographic content (created primarily for sexual arousal)” are not permitted. However, critics have pointed out that the phrasing of these revised guidelines leaves room for interpretation, especially on the difference between “sexual content that supports the story” and “pornographic content.” “These clarifications create even more subjective determinations of what counts as smut,” Kate Inman wrote for the University of Alabama’s student paper The Crimson White, adding, “Anybody who’s spent any time in the fanfiction writing trenches understands wha