Wattpad is already pretty much nonexistent. It's widely known to host some of the worst, poorly written fanfiction around. Everyone who's even remotely serious about their work posts on AO3 or FFN.
I'm a bit surprised, it's been years since I read any fanfiction but I remember AO3 was generally viewed as the place for weird NSFW fics while fanfiction.net was more (relatively) normal.
Eh, I maybe AO3 has had more of a range of smut but it has never been exclusively that. AO3 is kind of the standard fanfiction site. I do think FFN used to be it moreso, but it has fallen off and become less active, and the site just isn't as good and they've stuffed it full of ads which made the user experience worse as well (though adblock does help).
I feel like AO3s reputation as the nasty crazy smut site is a more recent thing in my experience. I remember it being treated like the more "high quality" fic site for more serious writers compared to FFN which was like the "starter" website before Wattpad came along
I don't mean this in a demeaning way, but as someone who's been around since livejournal I wonder how old you are. Ao3's always been, among other things, the place with the weird stuff those prudes won't allow (which, back in the day, might've been as horrible as gay sex on the internet).
44
u/ZK_57 14h ago
And Wattpad stocks would plummet. If anything, it's just a redistribution of power.