Important news about SOL

[alohadave]

Yesterday, the webmaster over at StoriesOnline made a policy change with their content.

All stories must be 18+ for any sexual content. Effectively making it very similar to Lit's policy. Authors must update their stories if they contain under 18, or the stories will be deleted. Approximately 17k stories. Some have already been deleted by the authors and stories that can't be modified, either because the author is gone, or the changes are too great will be soon.

I had a couple of mine flagged, based on the tags, but since I wrote them for Lit's rules first, all I had to do was change the tags. If you have stories over there, check your stories. They will be non-visible until updated and the webmaster informed.

What is driving this is a German NGO that put pressure on SOL's hosting provider, and they've had to switch hosts once already. This is a tactic that bypasses freedom of speech and whatever laws are in the hosting country. Because the hosting providers want to avoid trouble, they shutdown hosting for sites like SOL unless they remove under18 content. MCstories went through something similar with their host a year or so ago. It's a proven tactic and one that will be used again.

I post this not to talk about politics or consent laws, but to inform about what is going on in our corner of the web.

@AH_Mod, if this isn't allowed, I apologize, but this is important news and people here should be aware.

 

[RejectReality]

I only noticed it through dumb luck. I got a message from there about a story and stumbled across the announcement. Got an email from my editor alerting me before I even navigated to it, though.

Kind of important to warn everybody, because the announcement blurb and even the thread spelling it out are gone now. If someone isn't paying attention, they may have no idea why their stories have black circles next to them — if they even notice those. Though, they'll probably get some heads-up before any action beyond the current hiding is taken. ( Unless they're in the too short or too low scoring ranges that he considers "junk content" )

Several of mine were flagged. Most of them just required tag modification. I don't even remember tagging them with the now prohibited tags in the first place. Most of them are here as well. One needed an edit of a numerical age. Three are just unsalvageable in my opinion, because the just-shy-of or crossing 18 mark is important to the plot. One, Laz disagreed with me on, and did an edit of a numerical age himself, and made it visible again. I personally question that decision, because it's hard to read it and get any other impression. LOL I'm not going to fight it. I just made clear I'm not going to modify it any further than that, and the edit is kind of far-fetched hand-waving, so if it needs to go, it needs to go. Now rather than later if it's going to happen. It's the only place that particular story is posted, so it would be sad to see it go, but it is what it is.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Thanks. I think I have one series over there Ill need to change. I don't go go their that often and it hasn't had that many views so I may just let it go

 

[lovecraft68]

But are they going to be as ridiculous as this site in reference to someone saying "I saw someone naked back when I was 16?" or is it just about actual sex?

 

[alohadave]

Thanks. I think I have one series over there Ill need to change. I don't go go their that often and it hasn't had that many views so I may just let it go

They found a new host and the age restriction is back to what it was.

I'm sure it'll be an issue again soon enough, now that they are on the radar of the group doing this.

Telling people that they should start thinking now about how they approach their stories in the future was mostly ignored.

 

[RejectReality]

Check the latest site announcements in the forum before you change anything. There's been some developments.

But are they going to be as ridiculous as this site in reference to someone saying "I saw someone naked back when I was 16?" or is it just about actual sex?

What the plan at the time involved was more or less exactly what we have here. That's changed, for now, but we'll see.

 

[lovecraft68]

Check the latest site announcements in the forum before you change anything. There's been some developments.


What the plan at the time involved was more or less exactly what we have here. That's changed, for now, but we'll see.

I don't plan on doing anything over there. I don't have time as it is.

But I think they'd be smart to be somewhat less puritan than what we have here which often borders on the absurd...

 

[RejectReality]

The first part of that was actually meant for Chloe, but I missed the quote button. LOL

He was in panic mode, because he'd already moved to a new server in response to this German moral monitor group threatening the host, and they'd repeated the process with the new one. I'm assuming someone in the community hooked him up with a host that presented as having a stronger backbone, but we'll see. It was a full-on panic purge at the time this was first announced, so it was draconian.

 

[RejectReality]

As an indicator of just how big the panic was, a little less than 1/5th of all the stories on the site were hidden from view, and slated for removal if they weren't "cleaned up". He was preparing to sacrifice a full fifth of the catalog to save the other 4/5ths.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

It was a full-on panic purge at the time this was first announced, so it was draconian.

I wouldn't call it a panic purge. The guy simply flagged all stories with tags that violated the new guidelines to be hidden, and then informed authors to check said stories. I think this was a very reasonable approach. What else was he supposed to do?

And to answer LC's question...

But are they going to be as ridiculous as this site in reference to someone saying "I saw someone naked back when I was 16?" or is it just about actual sex?

...no. He made it very clear that the new rules were about "descriptive" sex scenes.

*EDIT*
What I'd like to add: I think it's only a matter of time until that group moves on to put pressure on Lit's associates as well. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if Bunny-CDN (if Lit is still using that) would soon start getting mails in that regard.
The AH mod saw fit to edit that part out of my post, but I described in a different threat that Lit still hosts a lot of stories that are WAY worse than the grandfathered pedo-crap you could still find over on that other site. At least SOL has tags they can use to quickly purge their system if need be. That's not an option for Lit, which, as I know out of personal experience, removes all tags that seem problematic if an author includes them.

 

[lovecraft68]

And to answer LC's question...



...no. He made it very clear that the new rules were about "descriptive" sex scenes.

Smart move.

 

[jehoram]

As a test, I just uploaded an under-age story to them, and it was listed almost immediately. So I guess things are back to normal for the moment. But if you want to save the stories, download them right away so you'll have them on whatever storage device you use.

 

[RejectReality]

I wouldn't call it a panic purge. The guy simply flagged all stories with tags that violated the new guidelines to be hidden, and then informed authors to check said stories. I think this was a very reasonable approach. What else was he supposed to do?

And to answer LC's question...



...no. He made it very clear that the new rules were about "descriptive" sex scenes.

*EDIT*
What I'd like to add: I think it's only a matter of time until that group moves on to put pressure on Lit's associates as well. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if Bunny-CDN (if Lit is still using that) would soon start getting mails in that regard.
The AH mod saw fit to edit that part out of my post, but I described in a different threat that Lit still hosts a lot of stories that are WAY worse than the grandfathered pedo-crap you could still find over on that other site. At least SOL has tags they can use to quickly purge their system if need be. That's not an option for Lit, which, as I know out of personal experience, removes all tags that seem problematic if an author includes them.

I wasn't implying there was anything wrong with it. He was bent over a barrel. But it was most certainly a panic purge.

It was basically the same standard as here with a few centimeters of leeway, according to the suggestions he said were okay and the clarifications he gave. You could say you noticed girls in bikinis as opposed to just noticing girls. He made some suggestions that other stuff might fly, and he was still in negotiations, but I think that was as much to try to prevent an exodus as anything.

All irrelevant now anyway.

And, this is treading dangerously close to places we shouldn't go on the forum, and some may not realize it's already tiptoeing on a razor blade, so *zips lip*

 

[AH_Mod]

This thread appears to have served its purpose, so I'm going to lock it.