PSA: Bot Comments Are Taking Over Ao3

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

They are all 3 sentences long

Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation

Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever

No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story

The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

More Posts from Squiddle147 and Others

squiddle147

1 year ago

I can’t get him out of my head

30K notes View Post

squiddle147

2 years ago

A small PSA to all those new to dealing with the porn bots that Tumblr now has a fresh wave of – I understand that when you go to report them, you want to report them as "[containing] sexually explicit material", but don't do that. Report them as spam instead.

These are spam bots flooding tags and the website in general with spam links. They often do not have anything sexually explicit on their blog (although they often have implicit material). Plus, these two reports get very different results. Reporting explicit material gets the bot slapped behind an 18+ wall, so minors can't check if they're a bot or not. Reporting spam gets the bot taken down.

Remember, folks: when dealing with a bot, report spam, not smut!

72K notes View Post

squiddle147

2 years ago

Y'all are pro life until that life isn't cishet. Then it's "God hates h0m0s" and "You're just confused"

You're pro life until that life gets shot up in a school (or a church, a park, a nightclub...). Then it's "Well, what a tragedy...but my desire to own an AR-15 that I use recreationally maybe once a year matters more than your life."

You're pro life until that life is disabled or neurodivergent. Then it's "Nobody should get special treatment" or "We don't have time for r*t*rded kids."

You're pro life until that life is an AFAB person's. Then it's "you should have kept your legs closed," "boys will be boys," "it's your fault that this happened, you should have covered up."

You're pro life until that life is brought into the world. Then it's "good luck in the foster care system," "try to make it as best you can in the streets or in an abusive household," and "it's your fault that your parents hate you, they never wanted you to be born"

You're pro life until life makes you uncomfortable. You're pro life until it inconveniences you. You're pro life until that life becomes an independent one that you can't control or use as leverage for your sick, bigoted regimes.

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squiddle147

1 year ago

Imagine Sirius raising Harry. Lucius Malfoy would be so jealous. Sirius is basically a smarter, hotter, richer version of him.

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squiddle147

1 year ago

What if all the Willy Wonka’s are the same Willy Wonka the only difference is they were raised by different parents.