[ SECRET POST #5189 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5189 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 50 secrets from Secret Submission Post #743.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

All adult content is blocked by warnings, though. Not even just the explicit kinky porn, but everything, including the "chose not to use archive warnings" works that might or might not have it, you need to click through a disclaimer before viewing it. Or create an account and agree to a blanket sitewide disclaimer that holds while you're logged in.

Putting "no really, this could have adult content, you better be 18" on the whole site wouldn't stop people who are determined to click through anyway. All it would do is make the site more inconvenient for everyone trying to read non-adult stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

The tags and description has zero warnings though. Do you think that 13 year olds should have to scroll past a dozen fics with tags such as "internal cumshot", "vaginal fingering", and "premature ejaculation"? All of these show up on the main page for Disney's Frozen, available without a single warning.

There's a difference between kids lying about their age to get to porn, and kids being invited and warmly welcomed to a porn site.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you really think a 13-year-old doesn't already know what those things mean? Middle-school kids have filthy mouths and are starting to get fascinated with sex (even if there's an element of fascinated repulsion). They're learning about it from their peers whether they're on AO3 or not.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between knowing what explicit terms mean and being bombarded by them every time they're trying to engage in fandom activities that they've been explicitly told was meant for them. Discord has recently even made a requirement to keep NSFW content strictly in locked channels. And it just so happens that I'm part of multiple discords with a lot of 13 year olds, and they all agree that this has improved their fandom experience. I value their opinion about it more than yours.

[(Anonymous)]

You do know you can filter out E-rated fics in a search, right?

Also there are already two gigantic fanfic sites (fanfiction.net and Wattpad) that do have content restrictions. They're right there! Kids can use those! And they do, I understand Wattpad is actually more popular with The Youth(tm) than AO3. There's no good reason to make AO3 more like platforms that already exist by removing a quality that's exactly what most of its users like about it.

[(Anonymous)]

You do realize that you have to filter it out every single time you search for a fandom, and a kid shouldn't have to be made to take extra steps to avoid being bombarded with porn on a website which advertises itself to be for them?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Since when does AO3 advertise itself to kids? It's always seemed to be the most adult-oriented of the big three. Not just in the porn sense, but catering to an older crowd in general. I always assume the average AO3 user is probably about 28, lol.

You didn't address my point about how there are two gigantic other archives that already have the content restrictions and filtering that you want. Kids should be using those! ff.net is kind of old fashioned, but Wattpad is really popular with young people still - why not direct kids there?

AO3's very purpose is to protect writers of all sorts of fanfic, including porn and erotica, and give them a safe place to host their work. It's a safe place for writers. It's currently the only big archive that's really trustworthy this way. Making it more like Wattpad or ff.net would just undermine its very purpose, and be redundant because Wattpad and ff.net already exist.

[(Anonymous)]

"Putting "no really, this could have adult content, you better be 18" on the whole site wouldn't stop people who are determined to click through anyway."

Can confirm, I was a teenager on the internet back in the days of fic archives for various canons. Almost all of them had the "This fic is NC-17, do not read if you are under 18" disclaimers for the adult stuff and my friends and I would just click right on past those.

[(Anonymous)]

I was a teenager on the internet long before A03 existed, and I remember having to specifically search for smut, because it wasn't available. Harry Potter fanfiction forums had age-restricted sections for smutty fics, FF.net filtered mature works by default and required you to specifically adjust the filters in order to see them, and livejournal has separate communities for NSFW works and for general fandom works.

And then years later on tumblr I tried to show my little sister how pretty the art is on the site and, even with the safe filters on, most of the the top results was Pokemon porn. It was an antirely different fandom experience to the one I had growing up.

[(Anonymous)]

Same here! My first ever fanfiction site when I was 12 was adultfanfictionnet - and to get into the site you had to put in a birthdate to 'prove' you were 18 and consent before entering the site; which I did because that's where the fanfics I wanted to read from a fan forum I was a part of were (also I didn't know that ffnet even existed yet until much later).

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for confirming that porn was not as visible in the fandom as it is today. You had to take extra steps to get to porn.