Why ShortFling Launched on the Web Before the App Stores

ShortFling launched as a website because the App Store and Google Play do not allow the kind of stories most of our readers come for. We read both stores' rules before writing any app code, and the conclusion was simple: an 18+ story platform belongs on the open web first.

That was a product decision, not a protest. The stores are private marketplaces and they get to set their rules. We just could not build the product we wanted inside them.

Apple's App Review Guidelines, section 1.1.4, rule out "overtly sexual or pornographic material," which Apple defines as "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings." Note the word descriptions. The rule covers text, not only images, so a fiction app is not exempt because it has no pictures.

Section 1.2, on user-generated content, matters more to us, because readers on ShortFling can write and publish their own stories. Apple requires UGC apps to offer content filtering, reporting, user blocking and published contact details. It then says apps that "end up being used primarily for pornographic content" do not belong on the App Store and may be removed without notice.

There is one narrow opening. If an app shows user content from a web-based service, Apple says it may display "incidental mature 'NSFW' content," provided it is hidden by default and only turned on by the user through the website. Incidental is the key word. It does not describe a catalog where adult fiction is the main event.

Payments are the other issue. Under guideline 3.1.1, access to premium content or in-game currencies must go through Apple's in-app purchase. Our chapters unlock with coins or VIP, so an iOS build would have to route those through Apple.

Google is blunter. Its Sexual Content and Profanity policy opens with: "We don't allow apps on Google Play that contain or promote sexual content or profanity." Its list of violations includes content containing "explicit text" or adult keywords in the store listing or in the app.

Google does carve out catalog apps that distribute books or videos, but with conditions: titles with sexual content must be "a minor fraction of the app's overall catalog," must not be actively promoted, and must be restricted from minors. We checked our own numbers against that. Of our 258 published stories, 255 sit in the NSFW zone. That is not a minor fraction by any reading.

Google's payments policy also requires Play's billing system for in-app purchases of digital content or goods, with a few listed exceptions.

On shortfling.com the structure is plain. General stories live under Fiction and anyone can read them. Adult stories live in a separate NSFW zone behind an 18+ gate, where visitors confirm their age by self-declaration before anything loads. Every character in that zone is an adult, and no story is about a real person. Those two lines do not move, on any platform.

We want native apps. Our plan is for iOS and Android builds to carry the general catalog and leave the NSFW zone out entirely, so the apps stay within both stores' rules and the full catalog stays on the web. That plan has not shipped, and we will not pretend the apps are close until they are.

Being web-first is not free. We do not send push notifications, so when a new chapter of a story you follow goes up, you have to come back and look. For a serialized format that hurts.

Discovery is harder too. The app stores are search engines in their own right, and we get none of that traffic. People find us through search, links and word of mouth, which is slower.

What we get back is control. We set the 18+ gate, we decide where the NSFW line sits, and we can price chapters without a store's rules shaping the catalog. For a platform where most of the catalog is adult fiction, that trade has been worth it so far.