The popular original and fanfiction website Wattpad has updated its terms of service, clarifying the platform’s position on explicit material. While Wattpad says its stance on how it handles explicit content hasn’t changed, readers are concerned because some wording in the new ToS makes it sound like Wattpad is banning smut—y’know, the thing people typically read fanfiction for. Many users have taken to social media to freak out over Wattpad’s perceived “smut ban.”
Digging into the updated terms, it’s clear this isn’t a blanket smut ban per se, but it does prohibit some forms of explicit material and restricts others in vague and concerning ways.
The biggest “clarification” surrounds what kind of smut can be published. According to Wattpad’s new terms, explicit scenes are okay as long as they happen between people who are 18 or older and any “sexual content that supports the story [and is] not the main purpose.” I already don’t like how explicit stories featuring characters under 18 are prohibited, but I understand why that has to be a rule. For a lot of people, writing fanfiction is therapy. It’s a way for them to explore their feelings or process their trauma, and sometimes the characters they use, by necessity, are under the age of consent. I also understand that explicit fiction involving underage characters can be classified as CSAM, whether the people involved are real or not, so sorry, all the “two 16-year-olds explore their sexuality / lose their virginity” fics have to find a new home.
But it’s the “sexual content that supports the story [and is] not the main purpose” bit that gives me the most pause. Anybody that’s spent any time in the fanfiction writing trenches understands what a bomb that is. Prohibiting explicit stories that are just about two (or more) characters going down to bone town blows up a significant and beloved category of fanfiction: the porn-without-plot fic.
On its face the rule is asinine, because how does Wattpad determine what constitutes enough plot to support the porn? Is “Spock being in the middle of a pon farr” enough justification for him to make a late-night trip to the captain’s quarters, or not? Wattpad has other rules that also seemingly kneecap popular fic tropes. “Sexual exploitation, coercion, or non-consensual acts that are glorified” are also not allowed, and while that makes some sense, especially with regards to non-consent, those themes encompass many, many genres. I can see those sexy mafia boss romances, stalker fantasy stories, and fics featuring a powerful CEO and his poor malnourished secretary that’d do anything to survive all falling under the prohibition list.
As much as these rules suck, I understand them. Wattpad, first and foremost, is a money-making endeavor, not a fiction website. They have a subscription service and relationships with book publishers and TV producers. It means they’re reliant on the same puritanical payment processors that once jammed up itch.io and Steam for their hosting of perfectly legal but explicit content. Wattpad’s ability to make money will always supercede anybody’s creative or therapeutic expression.
