hello! I love your blog and youâre the first person I thought of to ask about this. Recently Iâve been getting a few (at least 3?) comments that look like this:
(something about my fic) was (compliment, e.g. really good and realistic). (Introduces themselves as a comic artist / visual artist, says to find them on discord / other platform because âthis would look great as a comic!â)
The previous ones were deleted after about a day, but I just got another one. I donât think itâs the same usernames but they all follow this pattern. Itâs not stopping me from writing but itâs a little irritating all the same.
Iâm just going to start blocking them but I wanted to ask if anyone else is experiencing this? And whether youâd have any advice on dealing with this
This is definitely a spam comment, and it's one of the ones that was identified by AO3 directly. As the site gets more and more popular, more and more spammers are doing their thing. Unfortunately.
Any time you get a message like this from someone you don't know, no matter what platform it's on:
Do not message them back. Block/delete and otherwise ignore them.
Do not share any personal information - name, age, location, email address, anything at all.
â ď¸ Do. Not. Click. Any. Links. â ď¸
Do not go to a secondary location (in this case, discord).
Now for the advice specific to AO3:
If the comment is from a guest user, click on the comment to view it on your fic. You'll see a "Spam" button there that you can click/tap on. This button only appears on guest comments, not on comments from logged-in users.
You don't need to report spam comments from guest users. Just hit that button and you're done.
If the comment is from a logged-in user, go to the comment and then click/tap on the Thread button. Doing that will take you to a page for that specific comment (instead of your fic or your comments section as a whole).
Because the comment is connected to a logged in user, you can report this one. On that page, scroll down to the footer and click/tap on Policy Questions & Abuse Reports. That will open up the reporting form for PAC. It will also auto-fill the page of AO3 that you're on (which is why you want it on that specific comment's page).
When you fill in the report,
In the âBrief summary of Terms of Service violationâ field, enter âSpambotâ.
In the âDescription of the content you are reportingâ field, enter âThis is a spambot, their username is USERNAME.â (replace USERNAME with the accountâs actual username)
Other than that, block and/or mute the user and continue on with your day.
For more types of spam comments that you can be on the lookout for, and additional advice for dealing with them, bookmark this page on the OTW website (or this one on AO3). PAC is keeping it updated as more spam campaigns start to happen.
I also recommend following @ao3org here on tumblr. That's where I saw the notice about spam originally (and it's also where I hear about outages and other AO3 news)
