Because this blog is my most popular blog, I figure I should write about a phenomenon I've been noticing here.
As a part of a fun little experiment, I want you to go into the #digital art tag right now and sort the posts by latest. Find any post with less than 10 notes and check the notes, specifically the replies. If there is a reply, how many have something written like this?
All of these examples are on different posts in the digital art tag, and I bet if I kept scrolling I could find even more of them. In my experience, these kinds of bots have always left a reply minutes after I've posted something tagged #digital art (though they may also target other tags as well), and have never interacted with me or my posts in the past. The contents of these bot blogs are also very similar. They are rarely left blank, though what posts they do have may be sparse compared to an actual Tumblr user.
Given the scale of how often these guys post, it should be giving red flags that this is a bot operation, but I decided to take it a step further and message one of these bots. I had to do so through my main blog since sideblogs can't send messages without being approached first, but the fact that I post 0 art to my main blog these days probably doesn't matter to these guys.
The events that transpired are almost identical to a commission scam (explanatory post 1, explanatory post 2). The warning signs, if you don't wanna read the screenshots, were as follows:
Asked me to draw what was presumably their pet
Offered me a very high amount of money
Immediately wanted to use Paypal and tried to nab both a Paypal email and name
Very vague and open statements about what they wanted for their piece
If you get the gist and aren't interested in the screenshots below the cut: basically if you see these bots, please report and block them.
Reblogging this because I still get these bots commenting/replying on my posts. If you see these bots in my or someone else's replies please report them for spam and potentially scamming people.
