Do moderators use algorithms to reject stories?

[BobbyBrandt]

Im not aware of any laws that would criminalize the stories that literotica allows, or even m any of the stories it doesn't allow.

Maybe you can name some U.S.-based sites that do publish written depictions of characters under the age of majority having descriptive sexual activity.

I agree that in trad publishing and other formats, there are stories that mention underage characters having sex, getting pregnant, having babies, and the like. There are hundreds of stories on Literotica that do the same.

Postulating that Literotica is somehow unique in its policies on the subject of underage sexual activity is simply incorrect. The site would be an anomaly to allow it.

Goodreads, Wattpad, Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, Royal Road, Manybooks, Stories Online, and every other free site I am aware of that accepts stories, restrict underage content.

 

[Britva415]

In the US, "high school" usually means an age of 17 to 18

14 to 18.

 

[SimonDoom]

Maybe you can name some U.S.-based sites that do publish written depictions of characters under the age of majority having descriptive sexual activity.

I agree that in trad publishing and other formats, there are stories that mention underage characters having sex, getting pregnant, having babies, and the like. There are hundreds of stories on Literotica that do the same.

Postulating that Literotica is somehow unique in its policies on the subject of underage sexual activity is simply incorrect. The site would be an anomaly to allow it.

Goodreads, Wattpad, Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, Royal Road, Manybooks, Stories Online, and every other free site I am aware of that accepts stories, restrict underage content.

There's a difference between site policies and laws. You cannot infer from a site's policy what the law is. There are reasons beside strict legal requirements why a site would want to regulate sexual content.

Im not familiar with other sites policies because for the last 10 years or so almost all of my erotica reading has been at literotica. But 15 to 20 years ago explicit stories about underage characters were all over the place. Stories online certainly had them. So did asstr. I believe you can still find coming of age stories about under 18 characters.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Go to any bookstore in any state in the US (well, maybe not any bookstore, but at least some bookstores), and you can buy and read Lolita. The police will not come and arrest you, nor will they arrest the publisher.

I find it deeply depressing that people view Lolita as pornographic. It’s unreliable narrator is in jail awaiting sentencing for a crime most likely rape of a minor. He is supposedly dead at the time of the actual publication of the account of events. Lolita is literature. Uncomfortable literature, but literature.

I Fucked My Teen Daughter And Bred Her - She Loved It (current rating 4.97️ in the First Time category) is not.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Current laws generally have some reference to the average decent person's idea of what is obscene or unacceptable, and also refer to literary quality; Lolita and Romeo and Juliet long since passed the test. That doesn't mean that Literotica staff, who are neither lawyers not literary critics, should spend time discriminating what is a valid masterpiece and what isn't. They need a simple rule to avoid bankruptcy and prosecution in the jurisdictions they're in.

 

[Voboy]

Threads like this often descend into discussions of laws in various countries, and I always feel that misses the point.

The point is that Laurel doesn't want to host stories with sex under age eighteen, and has set that as the floor for sexual conduct on her site. The reasons why Laurel decided this might have something to do with laws, might have something to do with her own sensibilities, might have something to do with her perception of what kinds of readership she wanted back in 1998 or whenever... it doesn't matter.

What matters is: her site, her rules. Discussion of laws regarding age of consent are illuminating, in a way, but ultimately useless. The truth is that if Laurel preferred 21 to be the floor, we'd all be writing stories starting at 21. Or whatever other age she preferred.

 

[BeechLeaf]

That's true, in theory, but the public statements of management are generally in favour of free speech and sexual freedom. Laurel might be squicked by child sex, or incest, or peeing fetish, the way anyone else might be, but it's unlikely she manages her site by her own preferences. They need to conform to certain laws or they're in serious danger. They then have to choose how to police these restrictions. The current site rules seem like a sensible policy in this situation, given how many decisions they have to make every day,

 

[EmilyMiller]

Threads like this often descend into discussions of laws in various countries, and I always feel that misses the point.

The point is that Laurel doesn't want to host stories with sex under age eighteen, and has set that as the floor for sexual conduct on her site. The reasons why Laurel decided this might have something to do with laws, might have something to do with her own sensibilities, might have something to do with her perception of what kinds of readership she wanted back in 1998 or whenever... it doesn't matter.

What matters is: her site, her rules. Discussion of laws regarding age of consent are illuminating, in a way, but ultimately useless. The truth is that if Laurel preferred 21 to be the floor, we'd all be writing stories starting at 21. Or whatever other age she preferred.

Exactly

 

[Voboy]

That's true, in theory, but the public statements of management are generally in favour of free speech and sexual freedom.

Frankly, those statements have often proved to be more true in the breach than in the observance.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Laurel might be squicked by child sex, or incest, or peeing fetish

One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn’t belong…

 

[SmilingLez]

Some questions are a lot more complicated than the answers people give them.

 

[Writer61]

I have had a couple of stories rejected. One, inevitably, was rejected because the speech formatting didn't comply with site standards, which I consider a fair, if nitpicky, cop, and the other because it involved underage content. The key point here is that the rejection highlighted a specific sentence. I don't agree with the decision, but I have submitted a milder version, which is still awaiting judgement.

 

[IWroteThis]

The point is that Laurel doesn't want to host stories with sex under age eighteen, and has set that as the floor for sexual conduct on her site.

Do not presume to know what she wants. Besides, whether or not she wants to is irrelevant. What matters is that she doesn't.

 

[Voboy]

Do not presume to know what she wants. Besides, whether or not she wants to is irrelevant. What matters is that she doesn't.

...not sure how that refutes anything I said, but whatever.

Her site, her rules.

 

[IWroteThis]

...not sure how that refutes anything I said, but whatever.

Probably because I didn't actually refute the important parts.

I simply clarified that your projection of what she wants based on what she does is inappropriate and crossed out the subjective opinion you injected into your statement, leaving just the facts of the matter.

 

[IWroteThis]

Her site, her rules.

Her site, her rules, her reasons.

 

[Bramblethorn]

In Australia, and many other developed countries, the legal age of consent is 16.

(17 in SA and Tas, along with some close-in-age exceptions and restrictions intended to discourage things like teacher-student situations.)

But whether it's legal to do has little bearing on whether it's legal to depict. It's still illegal in Australia for 17-year-olds to appear in porn, and it's not automatically illegal in either Australia or the USA to write about under-age sex, any more than it is to write about murder.

I believe I have read reports of legal action taken by overzealous prosecutors (or maybe properly zealous, don't know) taking someone to trial over allegations of possessing child pornography of a written sort. I don't know the outcome of these extremely rare occurrences. Successful child pornography prosecutions are almost always for material that is visual in nature.

I posted some examples previously of cases in 2015, 2021, and 2023, where people were jailed under US obscenity law for hosting text-form child porn. All those people also had graphic material, but the first two cases at least were pretty clear that the text content was in itself a felony.

There's plenty of published fiction with under-age sex that has not been prosecuted (cf. Piers Anthony's "Firefly" which has Literotica-level descriptions of an adult guy having sex with a teenage girl). I am not a lawyer but I suspect Lit needs to be a bit more careful with such content than a mainstream publisher would, because obscenity is evaluated in a broader context. If the sex can be excused as part of a broader story, that's less likely to cop an obscenity conviction than if the whole point is to help readers get their rocks off (or if the prosecutor can paint it that way).

 

[ronde]

In the majority of US states, the age of consent is 16 as well. Less than a quarter of the states are 18, with the rest being 17. It's just easier to comply with the most restrictive regulations rather than piecemealing things.

It's the same reason I find GDPR compliance listed on many US sites.

It's also important to understand that Literotica is viewable world wide, and many countries do not have the free speech guarantees in the US Constitution. It's up to the site owner conform to the laws of the country in which the site is viewable, and there are criminal penalties for publishing content deemed illegal by that particular country. Most laws are an attempt to control child abuse and child pornography, but we all know that some human has to interpret what that law really means. As we see all too often, that interpretation is based upon personal bias rather than a reading of the law as intended.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The point is that Laurel doesn't want to host stories with sex under age eighteen, and has set that as the floor for sexual conduct on her site.

While not being able to see inside Laurel's head to dispute this, I am bothered by the incorrect assumption being made.

It implies that Laurel has some prudish, self-serving objective in establishing the content guidelines for this site, when in fact, there are hundreds of stories on this site that do mention sexual activity involving minors. They're just written in a way, and with the requisite skill, where the site isn't placed at legal risk for hosting them.

Does Laurel's personal beliefs influence the almost exact content guidelines existing on virtually every other adult story site as well as most mainstream social media platforms? No, this site has merely adopted the recognized "safe" guidelines required to avoid litigation for hosting underage content.

Guidelines that have allowed thousands of writers, on hundreds of platforms, to effectively create underage characters, have them recognized as sexual creatures, and find success in being published.

In my opinion, any writer who can't fit their content within the guidelines needs to step back and assess their own skills rather than the policies of the platform that they wish to publish on.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The law is broader than just Literotica. Let's not make people believe that this site operates differently under the law than others.

The age of majority applies to all adult content, on all websites, and live adult entertainment, such as strippers and cam girls.

The Law is indeed much broader. My point is the Literotica has its own standards and the stricter of those and the Law apply to anything published here. (And Lit is in some ways stricter. One could not publish Lolita or Romeo and Juliet on Literotica, for instance.)

And the law - whose laws, exactly? Each state in the USA has its owns, plus there are federal laws in that nation, plus hundreds of other codes in as many jurisdictions around the world. The instant availability of sites on the Net raised that question from the get-go.

I won't debate it further. If people here stick to pretty easy-to-understand rules Laurel and Manu have set, they should have no problems.

 

[PattyJune500]

I have had a dozen stories rejected. All had vague rationale.

I rewrote, edited and resubmitted 6 that were then published.

I rewrote, edited and expanded two more that are still rejected.

I learned the hard way NOT to submit too many stories at one time, make it CLEAR all characters are 18 years of age or older, TO edit them for spelling/grammar better, and to NOT put anything in the Notes section if you do not have to. I tried to be cute and say thanks -- that did not go over well.

Best wishes, Patty

 

[IWroteThis]

While not being able to see inside Laurel's head to dispute this, I am bothered by the incorrect assumption being made.

It implies that Laurel has some prudish, self-serving objective in establishing the content guidelines for this site,

Maybe they'll listen to you. They didn't when I pointed it out…

 

[BobbyBrandt]

One could not publish Lolita or Romeo and Juliet on Literotica, for instance.

I bet that I could.

The erotic motifs in each could easily get approved here.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Maybe they'll listen to you. They didn't when I pointed it out…

Too many people want to take short-cuts with their storytelling and not craft it to meet recognized and acceptable standards.

The art of expression is just that, an art.

Just as it's frequently easier for many to resort to vulgarity in the word choices employed during a conversation, it is easier to write without constraint than it is to be creative and nuanced when getting the same point across in an acceptable manner.

Give me a plot involving sex with someone underage, and I guarantee that I could write a story true to the premise, and get it published here.

 

[IWroteThis]

Too many people want to take short-cuts with their storytelling and not craft it to meet recognized and acceptable standards.

The art of expression is just that, an art.

Just as it's frequently easier for many to resort to vulgarity in the word choices employed during a conversation, it is easier to write without constraint than it is to be creative and nuanced when getting the same point across in an acceptable manner.

Give me a plot involving sex with someone underage, and I guarantee that I could write a story true to the premise, and get it published here.

I think you either responded to the wrong post or misunderstood what I said.