So I'm sure almost everyone knows about the porn bot problem by now, so here's a post detailing why it's a problem, and what we need to do about it.
First off, yes, always block the porn bots. Don't be mislead into thinking they're ok to keep around because they 'inflate your follower count.'
Firstly, no one cares about, nor can anyone even see, your follower count. Be free from the shackles that are the bullshit other socials told you was important. Don't let your ego be tied to a number. Having a lot of followers won't earn you any clout here.
Secondly, bots only follow blogs to try and legitimize their malware (and other dodgy) links. This post goes into more detail about that. Keeping them around can actually signal more to come to your blog, and the more you let follow you, the more your own blog can start looking sketchy in search engines or even get your blog flagged, so it's best to just block bots on sight.
Now that that's out of the way, you'll need to know how to recognize a porn bot. This round the template seems to be:
A profile photo of a pretty lady or guy, usually in their underwear, with a similar header photo.
A bio with some combination of:
[Age] // [Name] // [Location] // [Emoji] // [Top Bullshit% OnlyFans]
URL consisting of a name followed by a number (i.e: firstlast999)
Typically an empty blog, or if there is content, it's all dodgy links.
Visible, but empty, Likes Tab, & occasionally a visible Following Tab.
You likely recognize the pattern.
So, what you want to do is, first, report the blog as spam
On mobile it'll look like this:
On mobile you'll need to report spam first, and then go back to the menu again to block.
On desktop it will look like this, and unlike mobile, you'll be able to report spam and block in the same motion:
If I remember correctly,* be sure to "Report Spam", not "Report sexually explicit material."
Because the blog is empty, they haven't posted anything explicit that would violate TOS.
However, staff can recognize a bot, and if you report the blog for spam they'll take a look, more than likely find that the blog is posting or DMing dodgy links, and dispose of it.
Also! If the pornbot has followed you on one of your sideblogs, tumblr will only automatically block the bot from your main!
I'm not sure if that actually removes them from your sideblog's following, or just from your ability to see them there (feel free to correct me here), so if you get one on your sideblog it might not hurt to copy the URL and block them from your sideblog too. This can be done by going to your main blog's blocklist, copying the URL, and then simply pasting it into the blocklist of your sideblog.
Unfortunately this only works on desktop, but to find your blocklist on desktop, go to Edit Appearance under your respective blog/sideblog and scroll to the bottom.
And I think that's it. Here's wishing you all a happy and safe blogging experience!
[UPDATE: (A good point was brought up by @jooshtheclaus on another post)
The reason it seems like when we block one pornbot, three more take it's place, is likely IP tracking. You click on the pornbot blog to block it and it nabs your IP address to send more your way.
I have a solution we can try, but it only works on desktop, unfortunately.
Instead of clicking on the blog from our Activity Tabs to report/block, we go to our Followers tab and report straight from there. That way we don't click on the blogs and you can flag as spam and block both at the same time.
(For newbies, click on the little person icon at the top right of your screen and scroll to find the Followers tab under the blog/sideblog you need to block a pornbot from.)
*I remember this information from a blog that used to be all about taking down the pornbots. Unfortunately I do not know if that blog is still active, nor can I remember the URL. If anyone knows what blog I'm referring to, and/or if they're still active, please feel free to tag them so others can follow them for more tips!
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