We simply don’t have the space to get into that here, but this is the environment we’re dealing with. Unsurprisingly, users were shocked by this announcement, saying that banning smut from Wattpad is like “banning water from the ocean.”
It has caused an exodus to Archive of Our Own (AO3), a fan-owned, anti-censorship fanfiction site where almost every kind of content is allowed, as long as it’s clearly labelled.
Now, Wattpad and veteran AO3 users are clashing, with some Wattpad users reporting AO3 fics with content they disagree with—despite leaving Wattpad because of the censorship.