Yet another AO3 bot situation - please spread the word!

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

Please spread the word to other AO3 users! And if you see mean guest comments on other fics, maybe let the author know that it's probably from a bot and not a real person who thinks their writing is bad.

i feel like. being anti-harassment should be the default. i think its REALLY strange to go out of your way to bully strangers online. i don’t think. harassing people online and in fandom spaces should be the norm. that’s just me tho

the thing ive noticed, people tend to remember moreso that a person has been called out in some fashion rather than retaining the substance of the callout. its just like a binary switch between neutral and pariah. you catch wind of some controversy & the "isn't she a groomer?" switch is engaged in perpetuity with nothing to challenge it because everyone else has the exact same switch.

some people switch back, but its only because they never actually learned for themselves how severe the accusations are in the first place and just kinda forgot to maintain the energy. it's almost exactly as uncritical.

interesting that the determining factor here is how severe the accusations are and not, like, whether they were true

libsoftiktok going after a beloved inventor furry for some reason

if you're wearing a fitbit, you're using spottacus's technology. be grateful.

oh boy

he has a picture of an asriel (in hyperdeath form) dakimakura on his website

Republicans are such weird creeps >:T

I am reblogging for reach, and it's relevant to my blog because I have been harassed over fictional characters and ships that have appeared in my polls

2 things:

1) I think in this whole Pro vs Anti "debate" it's easy to believe that the Anti stance is the "default" or majority opinion. I just want everyone to take a moment and look at these results. The Antis just simply talk the loudest (mostly because the proshippers don't have anything to say. Their entire philosophy is built around not caring what others do, so they don't feel the need to berate others the way Antis do), Antis are NOT the majority.

If you voted "YES", take a moment to reflect on why that is, and why your opinions are, in fact, the minority. I then urge you to do further research into the Anti "theology" (or whatever word you want to use). It operates very similar to cult mentality. Learn to recognize the signs, and then compare it to the Anti community and your spot within it.

2) NO ONE deserves harassment over fictional characters. You don't have to like their opinions or what they create. Even if it's disgusting. Even if it's creepy or derogatory. They are lines and words on paper. They are not putting it into practice in the real world. Just avoid it. Block it. You can rant about how gross it is if you like, but PRIVATELY. Do not get the creator involved. In that situation YOU become worse than them.

Let that sink in for a moment. You find this person's actions deplorable. You think they are a terrible person. But they restrict themselves to fictional characters- Make Believe. By engaging withem, HARRASING them, you are causing deliberate harm to a REAL person. YOU and everyone else could've ignored them. It would have been extremely easy to just scroll past or block. Maybe take a moment to go "gross, what a freak". But a harassment campaign is inescapable. You are causing REAL mental distress to a REAL PERSON. You don't know this person's backstory. You don't know why they engage with media the way they do. And even if they really are just a "sick freak" there's no reason for you to take time out of your day to willingly engage in the content and the creators that make you uncomfortable. If they stay in their own lane so can you. Let them have their creepy corner of the internet. Be the better person.

Harassment isn't noble. And especially when it comes about by opinions on FICTION It makes you seem childish and irrational.

Don't like, don't read. Simple as that.

As someone who got anon death threats because I chose to write unpopular ships, I'm begging people to stop putting so much weight on the dating lives of fictional creations.

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

I'm gonna say it.

It's unhinged to assume that someone's taste in fiction equates to what they believe is moral or good, or is something they want to see or experience in real life.

That is a bonkers assumption to make.

I'm tired of humoring people with long arguments about it when the simple fact is it is a totally fucking absurd reach to accuse someone who enjoys something in fiction of being in favor of it in real life.

I'm tired of pretending like this is a legitimate position to hold-- that they should be afraid of fiction's dire influence on a reader's moral decay or that it's a sign of what the author secretly wants for realsies in real life.

I promise you it is still getting me death threats in 2024.

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

one of the most obnoxious things you learn as a trans woman is that you have to walk around with like, a memorized list of which of your friends have been defamed and by whom so that you can navigate all the shit being slung at them. it'd be nice if people come out of this with the realization that defamation is one of the central pillars of transmisogyny

it goes beyond "stop spreading callouts for purity culture nonsense"

like absolutely stop doing that 100% it's always stupid all the time

but like. i know trans women (plural) who have been defamed with false accusations of truly horrible acts. and it was just not true. not "i don't believe it," like it wasn't long before concrete objective evidence of the falsehood came to light. but these women are never fully exonerated in the public or community eye, it follows them around forever. it kills people.

like, listen. if you see a callout post, or hear rumors, with some horrible shit and you don't personally know anyone involved. consider. why was this brought to your attention. are you even in the target audience of people who would be at risk from this person if it was true. are your followers or contacts in that audience. 90% of the time the answer is no, it's just some poor woman with a medium-sized following on a website. there's no "position of power" to remove her from pending "investigation," all that's left to remove her from is her ability to live a normal life, and that's what the callout is doing.

just don't engage.

if you know anyone involved, that's different. but like. handle that shit like prosocial adults. character assassination is fucking evil and you should stop enabling it.

Like, obviously Matt deserves crap for how he's been handling this situation, but I feel like people have been focusing on the wrong thing.

[Image ID: An edit of the "Wow Cool Robot" meme. A Gundam, labelled "Predstrogen getting banned" fires a laser, which in turn is labelled "Transfems are targets of disinformation and false reports, and need all the love and support they can get." in the middle of the beam. Underneath the laser is an onlooker who remarks "Wow!! Fuck the CEO in particular!"/.End ID]

If they purge @wumblr for Kung Pow Penis-ing the CEO, all reblogs of the Dashcon baby post will be destroyed.

Basically, it boils down to this:

What all this adds up to is that even leaving the moral dimension of the act aside, from a purely pragmatic perspective, reblogging that callout post accusing a random trans woman you've never heard of of being a dogfucker or what-have-you is an action which, in a worst-case scenario, will contribute to ruining an innocent person's life, and in a best-case scenario, is likely to accomplish nothing whatsoever.

Folks often justify reblogging callout posts without performing due diligence under the rubric of "better safe than sorry", but any realistic assessment of the likely outcomes will tell you that the true "better safe than sorry" course of action is to keep your damn mouth shut!

I didn't know predstrogen or her blog but that doesn't matter to me and it shouldn't matter to you. if they came for her they will come for you. if you're not trans they will come for you when they're done with them.

hate doesn't start and end with one target, it morphs and amalgamates until no one is safe, and it lashes out a lot.

Also worth noting it had started with black bloggers alongside transgender bloggers. And even Palestinian bloggers in the face of the current genocide.

The real number of people who've been scorched Earth I can't even begin to comprehend as we usually only hear about it when its popular bloggers like Trans Mom or Predstrogen. The fact that even they were treated with such absolute cruelty means there had to have been so many more that went without any public outcry or knowing.

HI IM JAMMERJENNY THE BLOG ABOVE AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT TUMBLR STAFF JUST DID TO ME

i'll be real, i dont think we learned anything at all. it seems the takeaway is "clown on the ceo" and not "learn about the signs and tactics for how and why trans women get targeted and innoculate yourself against them. sit and think about how You Yourself might be perpetuating that culture".

its been less than a week and i've ALREADY seen a post going around trying to paint another trans girl as pedophilic and everyone in the comments immediately throwing up their hands believing it and no one but her close friends even Beginning to question it before reblogging. we've learned nothing

just adding on to say that the trans woman being targeted with false claims is Kara, one of the admins of cohost. mentioning this in case people have seen the un-debunked version of the bs callout floating around, because it's bullshit she keeps having to clear her name about this.

here is the "callout" with the comments debunking it, and here is Kara's post on cohost.

welcome to tubmlr, the website where the CEO (!) follows you off the website to yell at you (!) by listing all your private accounts (!!!). its an awesome tagline and a good reputation to have im pretty sure