Chapter Seven: The Wheels On The Bus
Four days ago, I reported a member’s profile and her story. I am, not by any stretch of the imagination, a prude, but I found the background of the profile page to be overly inviting:
Terrific. Evidence points to the fact that this user, her book and the abovementioned picture have been in circulation since 2014. I am not the only person who had noticed this, as someone had commented quite kindly:
She sounds somewhat bemused, but it is notable that the profile has 27 followers. This is actually interesting to some people. But who are these followers? One of them is 14-years old. Another is 15-years old. A third claims to be “always horny” and willing to ‘help’ others to ‘experiment’. If this is a circle of trust, I need a hobbit to remove it.
There is, of course, the possibility that the photo was an error. After all, I should not really judge a writer by her (open) cover and thus, I decided to read her single book. I found it to be less a story than a pamphlet that described the author’s sexual hijinks with her partner(s), with much relish. That would have been fine with me, except that the book was and still is labelled for Everyone.
As I had previously stated, underage readers had already accessed this author and her book. This did not match well with her assertion that she drew her inspiration from Pornhub.
However, there is also this issue:
This combination of factors raised my hackles. This page had existed unchecked since 2014. Although it had not been updated since that time, it had continued to do what it needed to do:
One of these readers had joined as a follower during 2017. This is a situation for potential abuse. Parents let their children into Wattpad, thinking that they are reading creativity. They would not expect this. After all, a lot of these ‘stories’ are embedded in the Fanfiction genre, so popular with adolescents. Remember #dirty imagines?
Given my concerns, I reported the user and her book to Wattpad. I filled out a form, citing issues as above. I received a cheery automated response from Wattpad. However, it also included this:
Frankly, I found this to be mystifying. Didn’t I just fill out a form, or was it just meant to generate the auto-reply? There is a phrase for this — double-handling. Paper gets shuffled twice and a process is doubled. In the least, it is an inefficient digital trail for a company to follow. In the past, I had also seen it used cynically in the health system to give the impression that something is happening, in order to cut down waiting lists. There are no positive reasons to double-handle information.
What is the big deal, you say? Just email back and be done with it.
The profile and book still exists, unchanged 3 days after I filled out the reporting form. You might think that the timeframe may be acceptable. However, I had spoken with a Wattpad representative specifically about this case 10 days ago. That is a considerable time to act. If the wheels of the CG turn at all, the brakes are seized, never mind the direction. How can the CG operate, when the processing time of complaints is so slow? Timeliness is key to effective enforcement, and I do not have that sense with Wattpad — not even with a case such as blatant as this one.
Update
In the end, it took 27 days, 3 reports and I had to report the profile to 4 staff members before the material was removed. The lack of urgency was disturbing.
