Asstr.org

Alt.sex.stories text repository, most often known by its acronym asstr.org, is a huge, largely unorganized collection of erotic stories, 450,000 as of 2015. It includes many boy stories and welcomes submissions.

Usenet

"Alt.sex.stories" was an identifier (address) in a very early form of the Internet, perhaps the earliest: Usenet groups, currently owned by Google Groups. Without a central server, messages posted by any user were automatically sent to any user who wanted to receive them, and who started up his Usenet reader program (now typically handled within a browser). Postings were categorized into groups. Usenet is moribund though it still survives, and has around 500,000 postings a day, a large number of which are spam (advertisements). Usenet was created when all computers on the network were trusted: no authentication needed; everyone is who he says he is (and at first, they were all "he's"). This has made it unsuited for an environment with malicious hackers and criminals of all sorts.

There is no central site that archives everything on Usenet; that would be prohibitive. Partial access is offered by some commercial sites. Access to text-based postings, without the more-expensive-to-store binary files (pictures, videos, music), is offered free by Google Groups.

In the 1990's to 2000's Usenet was a vehicle for distribution of child pornography; "pedo." was a top-level domain. (In Usenet, top-level domains, like "sci." and "alt.", came first.) Due to the same trusting environment Usenet assumed, it was impossible to automate the exclusion of child pornography.

The child pornography led several big Internet Service Providers, willingly or unwillingly (after protests), to ban access to Usenet altogether. (Though the database that constitutes Usenet is sent via the Internet, each Internet Service Provider must (redundantly) host it, although now there are businesses which host and provide access to Usenet by subscription. It is thus an expensive service to provide, especially with digital audio, picture, and video files, which did not exist in the early Usenet.)

Originally, there were no moderators on Usenet. Because of spam, though moderating has other benefits, the ability for a group, like alt.sex.stories, to have a moderator was coded into Usenet in the 1990s (?). As of 2015, most of the unmoderated groups are and have been for a long time useless collections of spam. Alt.sex.stories has been replaced by alt.sex.stories.moderated.

The nature of asstr.org

Asstr.org posts every story that has ever appeared on alt.sex.stories.moderated, although it also accepts stories directly. The only requirement is that the story be about sex, though "nosex" contributions are accepted if there is a reason to (another story by a sex story author, for example). There is next to no moderation or supervision, just a check that it is indeed a sex story and not, say, an advertisement for herbal Viagra or penis enlargement pills. .txt and simple .html files are accepted.

The best word to characterize asstr.org is "chaotic". There is no organizational structure or even an overview of it. There are a variety of partial guides, maintained for years on someone's favorite topic. There are also some portals made by individual users, on girllove or other pedo topics.

A significant number of stories in html have a small reading "program" prefixed to the file, which will scroll the text at any of several choices of speed. However, there is, at least today (2015), no routine processing or formatting of submissions.

The site includes stories on every conceivable topic, true stories, memoirs, full-length erotic novels from the classic (1950-1975) age of erotic paperbacks, reports of activities, including childlove, that are illegal in some or all countries. Stories in languages other than English, but using the Roman alphabet (exclusing Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and others), are found.

Stories are not categorized, although it hosts a mirror (copy) of nifty.org, a gay site with categories. A search facility is available, but it is limited to searching for words used in stories, or "tags" that the writer added at the beginning. It is impossible, for example, to search for stories in Spanish, other than searching for words in Spanish that might be in the stori

Asstr.org's policy on story topics

While non-fiction can be prohibited, stories (fiction) on any topic are legal in the U.S., according to the Supreme Court ruling. . (They are not legal in Canada or the United Kingdomand in the United States, the author of a self-published book, was successfully prosecuted for obscenity.