A few things:
1. This is a scammer.
The way this scam works, is the scammer attempts to lure you to another platform. They flatter your writing and offer to draw art for your story....for a price. Once they get your money, if they bother to send any art, it's AI generated slop.
2. They have to comment on many fics to find a few authors willing to take the bait.
Thankfully, most authors on AO3 already know about these scams and don't fall for them. Therefore, these scammers have to leave bait comments on many fics hoping for a bite. They know if the initial comment is flattering and specific to the fic they're commenting on, it lowers the author's guard and makes them more likely to engage. Which leads me to....
3. They fed my first chapter into AI to get a "personalized" review.
Yes, it is very flattering to get a gushing review of someone analyzing your story, but look at this review closely... And I'm not even talking about the text of the review.
The first chapter of my story is written to prompt the reader to immediately go to the next chapter to see what the character learns in the file folder. In fact, other than (now deleted) art scam comments, no one has reviewed the first chapter because I posted the first two chapters at the same time and real humans immediately click to read the second chapter. What real human is going to stop at an emotional cliffhanger, write such an in-depth review glazing the author and never click on the second chapter? But do you know who will do that?
A scammer who hasn't done anything except feed the chapter into a LLM to spit out a fake review as bait.
Not to mention, what real person uses impeccable grammar and syntax for several sentences and then can't be bothered to type "Discord"? Or even finish with a complete sentence?
4. What now?
The first thing I did was report the comment to AO3 and include the username that commented. Next, I froze the comment thread and blocked the user.
It takes a while for the volunteers to get to all reports, but I wasn't surprised when the comment was gone this morning.
The scammer probably deleted it themselves. They know most authors get email alerts to comments. They included their email and Discord username. If I'm an easy mark, they know I'll use that information to seek them out via email or Discord. The actual comment remaining on AO3 is a liability to them because they know their scams break AO3's TOU.
What can you do?
Firstly, be aware of these scams in the first place. Secondly, do not respond. Report the comment (include the username because the scammer very likely will delete the comment), freeze the thread, block the scammer.
Keeping your works locked to only registered users does significantly cut down on scam comments, but as you can see in my screenshot, some scammers do make accounts.
The best thing to do is to be informed.
