Wattpad looks likely to ban ABDL content soon

[MinnesotaWriter]

Looks like another site is coming down hard on ABDL content, which is incredibly annoying.

Wattpad went and shadowbanned a bunch of stories based on AI flagging them for not meeting their standards. Apparently they will be doing a manual review of all those stories to determine if they will get deleted or not. There's more info about that on the Wattpad Reddit site: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/comments/1btcjsy/update_on_tag_issues/

In addition to that, the ABDL story tag is no longer visible on Wattpad. Searching for it yields no results. Seems likely they will be coming down hard on all of that content fairly soon. I'm making sure to remove my stories from any of those tags, but I think my days writing on that site are numbered.

[BabySofia]

From that thread, it sounds like Tag Rankings no longer showing is a sign? I've seen that a few times though, so who knows. I just followed your advice and deleted adbl and adultbaby figuring people will probably find my works regardless at this point. 

To be fair though, there have been stories on that platform for a long time that need to go. They're about as bad as they can get, with cover thumbnails that I think raise warning signs too. (Usually horribly written too) Worst case I guess I'll continue posting the rest of my works to a couple other sites I've tried. I'm not surprised by this with some of the laws coming down from Florida, Texas, etc. that demand age verification to access adult content. At some point even sites like this are going to get letters from state AGs demanding them to show their compliance. I'm guessing WattPad has some attorneys who are raising that warning now, especially since it's not technically an adult site. (Although there is a lot of adult content on there)

[BabySofia]

1 hour ago, MinnesotaWriter said:

I'm making sure

So I just followed the Rabbit Hole and saw they updated content guidelines on March 20th. I also note it's Canadian laws they're finding applicable, and I vaguely remember them being Canada based? If I remember correctly Canada had some other laws that may be in play here too. Maybe some Canadians might be able to comment? The good news is that means they shouldn't be affected by crazy US state laws?

[Elfy]

I ran into trouble with Wattpad quite a while ago. They summrily deleted seemingly random chapters of random stories of mine and when asked why they couldn't give me any reason why those particular chapters were the problem.

That said, I didn't consider it a great loss. That website seems generally low quality all round and I got the impression it receives far more underage visitors than other places I post. I also found engagement to be quite low and, from a business standpoint, the conversion of Wattpad readers into subscribers was almost non-existant. I often found completed stories of mine on there would have barely more than 1,000 views whilst on places like DA I get 10,000+ views per chapter.

It is worrying to see adult content getting censored yet again though. As much as I dislike Wattpad I realise that at any time any number of places which I use could summarily decide to do the same thing. I'm not sure what the answer is.

14 hours ago, BabySofia said:

The good news is that means they shouldn't be affected by crazy US state laws?

They will be. If a website is available in a certain place it has to comply with the laws in that place. Rather than trying to create different rulesets for everyone though they are more likely to change the rules to meet the criteria of the strictest place.

[MinnesotaWriter]

One of my stories, "The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers," is no longer shadow banned. It's showing in searches and tags again, but my other two stories are still delisted.

I haven't added any ABDL tags back to the stories yet, though. I want to wait and see how everything plays out, since they did remove that tag listing. Other removed tags include diaper, DDLG, ageregression, little, littlespace, baby, and ageplay. You can still use those search terms, but it makes me not want to have those tags on my story, in case they decide to just move ahead with banning any stories with those tags in the future.

Interestingly, tags like TBDL, diapers, CGL haven't been removed yet.

See: https://www.wattpad.com/stories/abdl

On 4/2/2024 at 9:58 AM, Elfy said:

That said, I didn't consider it a great loss. That website seems generally low quality all round and I got the impression it receives far more underage visitors than other places I post. I also found engagement to be quite low and, from a business standpoint, the conversion of Wattpad readers into subscribers was almost non-existant. I often found completed stories of mine on there would have barely more than 1,000 views whilst on places like DA I get 10,000+ views per chapter.

I recently expanded to posting on DA. I noticed something interesting when researching how the viewcount works there. What I found is that views are counted even if a post shows in a user's feed (regardless of whether it was clicked on or not). It seems to be the case that views on DA are highly inflated. 

[Brown Owl]

This just shows the "Get your own [expletive of your choice] website... " kick i've been on with multiple authors lately, is timely. AI based scanning of stories for rules violations will always false positive on ABDL stories or stuff with this fetish, and several other kinks. unless Wattpad is building it's own alignment layer. Which i doubt highly. AO3 is probably the only large platform that is safe for now

[PamperedPrince]

That's one thing that I noticed on Wattpad.  I have since moved my stories to AO3. 

"Magic Diaper Stories", my most popular story has no ranks anymore, so I know that this one is shadowbanned.  One short story is also shadowbanned.  All the rest of them have ranks...for now...

Might I ask, what is DA?

 

[BabySofia]

4 hours ago, PamperedPrince said:

what is DA?

DeviantArt

[PamperedPrince]

Ah, Deviant Art.  I know what that is...

[Baby Jemma]

No real loss; I've never used Wattpad for much, to be honest (honestly haven't used DA...like, ever, either). I'll be worried if the same thing happens at AO3.

[BabySofia]

5 hours ago, Baby Jemma said:

I'll be worried if the same thing happens at AO3.

I don't know why there's so much attraction to AO3? It's so hard to search for works? I've got a few things posted on it at this point, but as far as interface for reading, finding things, and posting WattPad really is superior?

[Brown Owl]

AO3 is owned by a non profit. Using AI to scan works for rules violations would be out of character for them

[Baby Jemma]

2 hours ago, BabySofia said:

I don't know why there's so much attraction to AO3? It's so hard to search for works? I've got a few things posted on it at this point, but as far as interface for reading, finding things, and posting WattPad really is superior?

Why? Because it's a far more professional site than Wattpad (and FFN, where I got my start, for that matter). Honestly, I've tried Wattpad - both as a writer and as a reader - and AO3 as a writer, and as a writer, there's simply no contest. AO3 is one of the best sites because - like Brown Owl said - it's independently owned as a non-profit, allows writers much more creative freedom than Wattpad (larger story hooks/summaries, many more options for customizing your story to your liking from crossover fanfics to original works, etc.), while still respecting any trigger warnings for readers (something I feel very, very strongly about to the point where I simply rate all of my stories as at least mature and explain my content).

 

And then you have the chapters, which have a larger character limit than other sites like FFN, guaranteed spell/grammarcheck (useful for those very occasional errors I've missed, even if it doesn't catch all of them), the ability to customize chapters and pseudos to your liking (including summaries for chapters and pseudos when you don't want to share your ABDL stories on the same place you post your other stories). You can read all of the chapters in one go or pace yourself, and it's entirely your choice.

 

If AO3 fell under the same thing Wattpad is, I'd be terrified. But right now, it doesn't matter since I barely use Wattpad myself.

[BabySofia]

30 minutes ago, Baby Jemma said:

guaranteed spell/grammarcheck

Thanks for explaining what you like about it. I write and edit long before I post, so I think that's part of why I haven't noticed those tools. I appreciate your feedback there!

[littlebopeeper]

On 4/1/2024 at 6:30 PM, BabySofia said:

At some point even sites like this are going to get letters from state AGs demanding them to show their compliance. I'm guessing WattPad has some attorneys who are raising that warning now, especially since it's not technically an adult site. (Although there is a lot of adult content on there)

I share your concern for the future of this site.  Spider crawls are going to make it very easy to scan content for violations of state laws governing adult content, and the absence of a solid age verification protocol in my judgment will make this site vulnerable on this score.  The administrators do a great job when it comes to keeping minors out of sexual situations in stories here, but will that be enough?    

[DLClayMongoose]

Why not make our own?

[LGGrace]

As must as I hate that Wattpad may do a blanket ban on ABDL content, they need to do something. The sheer amount of underage sexual content on that site is sickening.  

Also it seems that over 50% of the ABDL content was written by a 5th grader and is unreadable. 

This why I'm not even bothering to post my current story on that site. I'm mainly writing it for myself anyway and the ABDL community. 

[BabySofia]

Whelp, myself and several other authors have started receiving removal notices. I did put an appeal in, but I doubt it's successful. For now I'll keep posting LCW there since it doesn't seem to have attracted that attention yet, but I'd bet it's a matter of time. (I hate that, I really do think it's easier to read stories on that site!)

[MinnesotaWriter]

I'm 1 for 2 with stories being removed so far.

"The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers" had been shadow banned, but it's all good now, so it seems at least that maybe not all diaper related content is being eliminated. But that story is also completely PG, and in the Wattpad version I've also censored out any bad language.

"Diapers Never Lie" got removed last week. I can't say if that was because of any ABDL content in it, it was a pretty dark story (even though in my opinion it didn't violate any of Wattpad's rules), so I think it's removal could have been unrelated to the diaper aspect of it.

They seem to be working their way backwards, starting with newest stories, so will see in the coming weeks/months if "All My Mother's Rules survives. It's hard to say, it feels very much like a lot of this is at the whim of whoever the specific reviewer is.

[LittleAcorn]

On 4/16/2024 at 6:59 PM, DLClayMongoose said:

Why not make our own?

You mean like an archive? Of our own?

😆

[spark]

6 hours ago, MinnesotaWriter said:

I'm 1 for 2 with stories being removed so far.

"The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers" had been shadow banned, but it's all good now, so it seems at least that maybe not all diaper related content is being eliminated. But that story is also completely PG, and in the Wattpad version I've also censored out any bad language.

"Diapers Never Lie" got removed last week. I can't say if that was because of any ABDL content in it, it was a pretty dark story (even though in my opinion it didn't violate any of Wattpad's rules), so I think it's removal could have been unrelated to the diaper aspect of it.

They seem to be working their way backwards, starting with newest stories, so will see in the coming weeks/months if "All My Mother's Rules survives. It's hard to say, it feels very much like a lot of this is at the whim of whoever the specific reviewer is.

I looked after you posted it, and sure enough Diapers Never Lie was not in my library.   I don't understand the arbitrariness of the decision.    Both portray abuse, and it's hard to say which character suffered the most.   

However I've noticed that most of the terrible stories (which is vast majority of Wattpad content) is still there.    I'll also not that AMMR never showed up when I did a search for diapers on Wattpad before this happened.   I only could find it through your link, or putting in a direct search for the tittle. 

[Babypants]

The Stories heading on this site should serve as an archive, but I have no evidence that the allaboutdiapers@hotmail.com address is actually live.  I have never, repeat never, received a reply here, nor had a story segment actually appear.  For example, I have twice submitted the opening scene of AN HOMAGE TO VINCENT VEGA as a lead in to bringing the whole story over there because readers have requested a text free of comments.  To date?  Crickets.