Lots of Photography

Associate photography editor of The Snapper, Millersville University of PA

[transformativeworks]

Harassment Spam Bot Alert!

Date posted: November 12, 2025

AO3 has recently seen a rise in guest spambot comments making false accusations about work creators or other users. For example, they may claim that a particular user is discriminating against minorities, trying to hide the fact that they use AI, or are at risk of having their works stolen or deleted.

These comments often copy existing AO3 usernames in order to make their accusations seem more legitimate. They may also try to lure people onto other platforms (similar to the art commission scam), or use fake links that actually lead to pornographic images.

As always, we recommend that you do not click on any suspicious links or give your contact information to scammers. Instead, simply mark the comments as spam or report them so that the Policy & Abuse committee can remove comments left by these spambots.

Learn how to recognize them and what to do below the cut!

How to recognize this kind of spam:

The comments come from guests, not logged-in users.

The comments may start with praise for you and your writing, trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Or they may claim that you are a bad writer, trying to make you too upset to realize that the comments are fake.

The comments may accuse you or another user of promoting discriminatory beliefs, deceiving fans, or similar behaviors that might cause other people to shun or harass the accused individual. They may claim that they checked social media to find that the accused user is "brazenly sharing hateful content" or "bragging about using AI".

The comments are often pleading or angry, asking you to "stop lying to your readers", "don't remove the AI prompts from your work", or suggesting that you "consider adding more diverse characters" to "repair the trust you've lost with your audience".

So far, these comments have all been from guests. Our advice is to flag them as spam to better filter them out.

To help train our automated spam-checker to block similar guest comments in the future:

If the comment is on your own work:

Go directly to the comment on your work, either by clicking on the link in your email or in your AO3 inbox.

Click on the "Spam" button to mark the guest comment as spam and remove it from your work.

Note: The "Spam" button only appears when viewing a guest comment directly on your work. This is because the AO3 comment inbox is merely a copy of the work's comments – deleting a comment from your AO3 inbox does not delete the comment from the work itself.

If you see comments like these on someone else's work:

Feel free to let the creator know the comment is from a bot, and that they should mark it as spam.

You can also report the comments as botspam via the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.

If you are reporting multiple guest comments, please submit only one report, and include all comment links in your report description. (You can get the direct link to any comment by clicking the "Thread" button on the comment, and then copying the URL of that page.)

[transformativeworks]

As of December 2025, bots have also left guest comments harassing users by:

threatening to report you/your fic to the authorities or your employers

alleging security concerns like your email being compromised or spyware on your computer

claiming that they know your address and are going to visit you at your house

saying that you will die alone and unemployed over the holidays

What these bots claim is not true. These accusations do not mean your work will be deleted or that your accounts are insecure. We recommend that you mark these comments as spam following the instructions in our previous post.

These examples also do not represent the full range of harassment comments that you may receive. We will continue to try and keep you updated about trends; however, please note that the exact wording the bots use will continue to evolve.

If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!

[transformativeworks]

As of January 2026, bots impersonating legitimate users have increasingly left guest comments harassing other users by:

claiming that they know where you live

alleging to have seen you in person

threatening to meet you face-to-face

saying that they posted your personal information (name, address, etc) online

What these bots claim is not true. These comments are likely intended to alarm you into replying.We recommend that you mark these comments as spam following the instructions in our previous post.

These examples do not represent the full range of harassment comments that you may receive. We will continue to try and keep you updated about trends; however, please note that the exact wording the bots use will continue to evolve.

If you're not sure if something is a spambot comment, you're welcome to contact Policy & Abuse for assistance. Refer to the original post for more information!

[saroko-still-draws]

Got into Wings of FIre via the comics, and my brain decided that it would be a great idea to develop some fan OCs while I tried the books. Which then spawned a bunch of sketches below, a whole ass comic that just needs to be scanned, and who knows what from there.

I don't even know why these two are living in my head. They just are. In the meantime, here's some profiles.

General stuff that applies to both (tw for mentioned suicide attempt):

Duckweed picked up Pebble to be his pet. He always wanted one (a pet. Not a scavenger. That was just luck) and felt more comfortable bonding with an animal than a dragon.

Despite actually picking up some Dragon on his own, Duckweed didn't realize that Pebble was sapient until he tried to kill himself.

They don't become friends right away even after that revelation...

...But once they do, they end up getting along like birds of a feather.

Pebble sometimes rides in one of Duckweed's bags. One becomes dedicated to his stuff.

Duckweed enjoys all kinds of art, but his favorite is the theatre. Pebble doesn't see the attraction.

Together, they'll go on a road trip across Pyrrhia, see the sights, take in the diverse cultures, lose their souls, learn a new language (mostly in Pebble's case), saving a family, healing, and accidentally commit murder. Not in that order.

[jbh-from-pa]

Conoy Township, PA, after a snowstorm.

[jbh-from-pa]

My university during finals week, early one foggy morning.

[stitchedcomet]

What am I most proud of with my writing process?

The design project we previously had involved imagining a specific scenario with a canceled show included making posts from the creators and from angry fan. I really connected with this project and feel like it was my best writing for the class. Writing with a narrative in mind is what I find the most engaging, and I feel I am able to make decently realistic depictions of people engaging with others. This writing process involves considering real world experiences I have witnessed and emotions I have personally felt, and I feel this personal knowledge improves my writing.

[jbh-from-pa]

I really love any assignment where I'm able to put my creative skills to the test. I ended up making way too much lore for my version of "Favorite Show." Creating the posts ended up being really fun too, once I found the right template with Dr. P's help. I ended up using BlueSky as my platform, which meant I had to really learn the terminology and the slight user experience differences between it and Twitter.

[sublimecapy]

Original Content Post Week 15 (1 of 3)

What are you most proud of with your writing process?

This semester I feel that I had made improvements to my own revision process and I am able to look at my own work and understand what areas need to be revised. I have struggled with the revision process in recent years because my previous college did not stress the importance of it. They gave a close due date to an assignment and it was expected of us to fix things without a specified revision period. With that being said, I am proud that I have fully embraced the revision process this semester and completely understand its importance as I will be using it in the future.

[jbh-from-pa]

Ugh man, having short due dates sucks. I tend to need more time to develop my assignments, and so far my professors at Millersville have been very good with not expecting us to have work done fast, especially since having multiple classes all expecting their assignments done quickly would be just too much.

[cararenee652-deactivated2024123]

Original Content Writing pt3

Q: What are you most proud of with your writing process?

A: I feel like my brainstorming process has become easier for me to do. Coming into this class I would skip the step entirely and just immediately start writing. With the brainstorming I was also able to understand my audience better and to think about who I was writing for. I was also able to adapt my writing to fit different situations and different constructs better. This is the area of my writing I felt I improved the most through this class. I felt as though my revision process has also gotten better. I spend more time changing the work than just simply looking for grammatical errors. 

[jbh-from-pa]

Honestly, that's a good lesson to take away from this class, and it's something I should probably take to heart as well. I know very well I write like the author I base most of my current writing on (Tui Sutherland) and while she is a very successful author, her tendency to "just write" rather than plan anything led to a lot of the complaints her flagship series has about it.

Many of my writings are meant more for myself rather than an audience, and while that does end up attracting an audience of like-minded readers, I think to move to getting a wider audience, I will need to learn how to appeal to more people, and part of that probably would be training myself to plan my stories more.

[jbh-from-pa]

Peer Review!

I'm wondering if I managed to understand what "genre" meant for this segment of the What is Content Reflection. I took it to mean "the type of writing I'm doing, and who I'm writing for" but I may need to go back and look to see if the textbook had a different definition for the purpose of the class.

In that case, did I do this part of the Reflection okay?

[jbh-from-pa]

What do I like best about my Content Learning Assignment?

So far, I like how simple this assignment has been. I like writing best when I can just throw open a document and write, and this assignment allows me to do just that, and even provided me with an outline to get me started.

And the thing I like second from writing is talking about writing, which is also what this assignment does for me. So this is a great way for me to close out the semester, by getting to reflect on my work, not just for this class, but for all my college work so far.

[jbh-from-pa]

Thursday Check-In!

@npfannen, for the final assignment, are we just answering the questions outlined in the assignment? Are we supposed to include any multimodal elements?

[jbh-from-pa]

What do I like most about my writing process?

Somewhat related to web writing, but something I'm still amazed about today is my ability to come up with what seems like a simple story idea in a moment and just snowball on that idea for days to months to the point where I have a literal series of novels with extensive lore.

This on top of doing almost no outlining done to plan these stories, with the drafting process itself taking the story new places. My current personal writing project is currently standing at over 125,000 words online and has a stable audience of regular readers, which is something I could only hope to someday have as a teenager.

[kelyle]

This is my cancellation post. Does it sound like we are sad that we are canceling the show, Let's all come together at this time of sadness to share some of our favorite moments from the show? or does it sound cheesy in a way that I should rewrite it?

[jbh-from-pa]

I would say encouraging fans to grieve the show they just lost could go either way, it would either be condescending or would be an effective way to let fans process their loss. I'm not quite sure which of these it falls into.

[kastraub]

Original Content #3

share a section of your Design Project content. What is the work of this sample? How can we help you revise? 

I posted an example of an original content piece that I created for this project in my post for the professor, asking for more feedback on it, but here is an example of what I created on my TV show's Instagram story. This to me the easiest way to create posts, so I highly recommend it, but with Instagram, I’m struggling to find new ways to post my content and overall I feel like my content is very repetitive which I would love to get feedback on how I can change that and make it better and more creative will also still appealing to the Instagram audience. I can’t really make a Reel for this, but as I am creating my last seven posts as the TV show account reacting to people‘s criticism of the cancellation, I’m a little stuck on ideas and how to be more creative. I would love suggestions as to how my other Instagram creators are making their content so unique. Thank you in advance for your feedback!

[jbh-from-pa]

I can't quite read the letter in the image for the post, but the formatting of the post is spot on, following the user experience and information architecture of an Instagram post closely. I am noticing that it's in the compose UI for a story. I'm not sure if this is actually Instagram you're making this in but if you are you'd probably want to post it before screenshotting it for a submission.

[dpsauve567]

share an example of your favorite television show or movie - how does that show/movie help you work through this project and understand angry fandom?

One of my favorite shows ever is The Mandalorian. It is a show that is a spinoff of Star Wars, and it was the first big streaming show that was on Disney+. This show came out 5 years ago and it has 3 season so far. Unfortunately, many fans have begun to attack the creators, writers, and directors of the show for its lackluster third season, and even for some of season 2. They have become very angry and hateful, almost to the point where I’d rather not be associated with them. I do share some of their frustration, but not the hate that comes with it.

[jbh-from-pa]

I heard of a similar thing happening with the last major show I was part of a fandom for. (Steven Universe)

I forget why exactly they behaved like this but there were some fans who were upset enough that they sent death threats to the cast and crew. Definitely not acceptable fan behavior.

[jbh-from-pa]

How does this look? Do I effectively convey the cancellation of the show without sounding patronizing? Also does my "tweet" (really a Bluesky post) match the style of a Bluesky post?

[jbh-from-pa]

@npfannen sorry for being a day late with the Thursday check-in. I wanted to know if the little extra references I sprinkled into some of the more generic posts add enough "pizzazz" to the posts. Also, is my "Tweet" formatting alright? Notice I'm using the username format from Bluesky.

[jbh-from-pa]

My Experience with a Cancelled Show

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I wasn't part of the fandom for too many TV shows, but one in particular that I was part of was Steven Universe. That show was cancelled, but was given the ability to wrap up its story with a sort of "sequel series."

This sequel series became controversial, mainly for its portrayal of Steven himself, whose arc over the course of the series revolved around him suffering from PTSD. He ended up making many poor decisions as a result which many saw as ruining his character, even though the portrayal of PTSD was accurate in that it did show alteration of his character.

I was mostly hands-off with the more fanatical parts of the fandom, but I have heard of incidents such as death threats pointed at the cast and crew, and the fact that Steven's voice actor had to go dark on social media due to stress and depression.

I was disappointed of course that Steven Universe had been cancelled, but at the same time, being given the opportunity to wrap up its story was a privilege many other shows have not been given. Many still hope that the show will be revived, perhaps as a spin-off. Rebecca Sugar, the showrunner, seems to be comfortable simply taking a break from content creation. Of course, the state of Cartoon Network in the present day may mean Steven Universe won't be coming back anytime soon.