Should we block all bots that follow us? Are they harmful somehow? I would like to know as much as possible.
The bots are not directly harmful to you if all the are doing is following you. What they are doing is, the owners of the porn sites who have created the bots want it to look like their website is getting a lot more human traffic than it actually has. This is because the more popular a website is, the better the chance of it ending up on the first page of a Google search. However, Google’s algorithms are smart enough to identify a real human being’s patterns online from a bot designed to artificially create clicks or traffic.
So these websites make bot accounts on tumblr, which is linked to their websites, and then they have those bots interact with YOUR blog, because Google’s algorithm then sees YOUR activity and it is linked to the porn site. And Google thinks “Oh! This blog is run by a real human person judging by their online behaviour! (like how you type and construct sentences etc) So this website must be popular!” and then the site gets pushed up as a search result. And if a site is on the first page, then it will be the most likely site to get clicked on by somebody googling for porn, which increases chances of the site getting clicked on, generating income for the site via clicks or advertising.
This does not do anything to your tumblr account at all, except give you a false number on how many real human followers you might have.
HOWEVER
there are other porn bots on tumblr which are WAY WORSE, but they do not seem to be the kind of bots designed to follow blogs.
These bots will reblog popular posts (over a certain amount of notes) usually a picture, and delete the OP’s text on it and replace it with a link to an external porn site. (sometimes advertising what it is and sometimes just posting up the link without explanation)
Other bots will directly IM you with messages along the lines of “Hey I just got home. You wanna video chat?” with a link that will either go to a pron site or, more often than not, a hack that will rob your account and possibly use it as a porn bot, locking you out by changing the username and password.
To stay safe on tumblr, the best things to do is block and report any accounts you see reblogging pictures and adding the same looking link to all of them. As well as messages left on popular posts linking to porn sites.
NEVER click on a link sent to you via IM if you don’t know the person. Even if it LOOKS like a youtube link or something else like a discord link. the links are specifically designed to look as legit as possible. Luckily the text itself is usually easy to stpo, even if it’s from a person you recognise or a mutual. It’s usually something like “Here’s something just for you, dear” or something weird like that. NEVER CLICK LINKS FROM PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW! And DO NOT interact with IMs asking you to video chat.
It is a good idea to block and report porn bots that follow you, however. This is because the more pron bots you have following you, the bigger your chances of getting MORE porn bots following you. And it hurts the people who create bots which deters them from focusing on you.
So porn bot followers don’t hurt you directly or puts your account into direct danger. Mostly it’s just annoying :/ and it IS harmful in a general way? Like it harms tumblr as a social media hub because it annoys users and drives them away, but it’s not directly harmful to your blog in a way that should worry you.
It’s best to block and report the ones you manage to see and catch.
To the fu***ng bots that are colonizing Tumblr lately: enjoy this post!
