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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.)
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!
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