#Ao3 hate bot

[misterspectacular]

Ao3 Hate-Bot Active as of May 30th 2025

I got hit by a couple of "hate bot" comments today (May 30th 2025) on A03. It's been a thing before.

This "hate bot" uses the names of users who are actually registered, but will have (guest) after the username. It's not the actual user, so don't go questioning them.

The "hate bot" comments will be very vague, not mention character names or specific scenes or moments, and attack the writer personally more than anything.

Here are a couple examples:

Mark as spam! And remember, your work is worth posting!

(I just feel bad for those who are going to think these are actual people commenting. I thought it was, at first, then realized something felt off. I did some research and yeah, this has happened before and is a bot.)

[stilettochat]

Ao3 hate bot on the loose. Please read advice.

Ao3 hate bot is going around leaving nasty messages. If you get a comment like this mark it as spam. According to comments it seems to be going to most recent not fandom specific.

[cilil]

So today I got a rather unkind comment on AO3 (one could call it hate), but I believe it to be a bot for several reasons:

Guest account, but username attached

Said username exists but person is unlikely to be reading Tolkien fic (according to their Tumblr and AO3, they are in other fandoms)

Two grammatically correct sentences

Super generic text that could apply to any fic:

"I've seen better fanfiction written by a toddler. Get it together!"

I'm curious, did anyone else get comments like this? Let me know.

And to those who have gotten rude comments and are now worried/upset: Maybe it was just a bot too. Either way: You're awesome for putting your writing out there for others to enjoy and you don't deserve to get rude comments for it. If you want feel free to message me to compare cases and discuss details :)

[archangelsunited]

Gentletheys- may I introduce you to Mr. Bot. Mr. Bot is a gentleman of little consequence who likes to use copy/paste to try and play with emotions. Mr. Bot uses generalities and big words and intense description to make you think they have an actual opinion. Please disregard and/or mark as spam!

[pickledoesthetumbling]

omg im doing so well on ao3!!! just got my first bot saying that it sucked!!! did i cook with the response?

i'm so proud!!! this means i've made it, right?

[featheredcrowbones]

hate comments only activate the younger version of myself that had to pretend they were anime protagonists to survive their childhood

so like i’d really think about the intention behind it before sending it unless you want to meet the eighth grader that thinks they’re lelouch vi britannia then you know… be my guest

[crimeronan]

the main unifying factor in parts cut from the trc graphic novel seems to be anything unpalatable for middle-grade, or perhaps anything that might make new readers tweet in upset at the author. unfortunately this has just made it guaranteed that old readers will tweet in upset at the author instead, regardless of whether she had Literally Any Control over the editorial decisions.

so. everybody loses.

don't tweet at the author btw.

[musicalmoritz]

My current conspiracy theory is that the Tadaai hate anon on ao3 is just some dude who really fucking hates Tadaai and pretends to gaf abt the quality of the fics so they have an excuse to harass the shippers

[adelineiserman]

Got my first hate bot comment today!

A reminder that this is a thing that's happening. If there's nothing specific to your story, it's a guest comment, and it reads similar to this, it's probably a bot. Don't let it discourage you. Turn off guest comments or guest readability if you need to. I personally use comment moderation but allow guests to read and comment.

Lastly, if you get one of these, don't delete your fics. You wrote them, you were brave enough to share them, and people want to read them.

[pinkydee10]

Welp. I am extremely pissed off

Here’s @theallianceofcelestials post which goes into more detail;

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65010388

If you haven’t heard already, AO3 is currently under attack by a scraper bot which has been stealing fanfics as a part of it’s “learning algorithm”

This has caused many authors to publicly lock our hard work to prevent it from downgraded to a file for people who don’t appreciate or understand anything about writing to use for their own purposes.

I literally made my fics public because I fell in love with this site as a non-user, now I have to make a hard decision which prevents future writers from being inspired like I once was just to protect myself because once again people who have jaded opinions from just glancing at AO3 just have to ruin it for everyone else!

I’m literally a month away from finishing my creative writing degree, I don’t need this! The community doesn’t need nor deserve this!

Sorry if you don’t have an AO3 account and can no longer see many beloved fics because of the selfishness of small minded humans.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see how I can possibly file a DMCA

[thelilylav]

Commemorating my first bot comment before I delete and report it cause it was too funny I had to. Glad I could make a bot question the meaning of existence <3

[prevalent-masters]

Bro i just read an article about identifying AI writing and I’m like…how much of literal published fiction is at least helped along by AI these days because I feel like the writing style of AI is the exact same style as all of the viral TikTok books that I always think are so bad…or is that just popular writing now and so that’s what AI mimics?

Also I got curious and plugged in a paragraph of writing and asked chat gpt to edit it and it edited a grammatical error INTO it and chopped up all my sentences which its like…i know i can get into run-on territory but also sometimes sentences are just longer than ten words and have commas.

I just don’t get it AI makes bad writing why do people use it.

[clodicious]

Yaaaaaayy my first hate bot!!! Milestone achieved!

[bespectacled-bookwyrm]

I am super, super, SUPER sorry, everyone, but because of the AI nonsense going on I'm afraid I've had to lock my fics so only registered users can see and comment on them.

I hate doing this, because there are so many lovely guest reviewers, but the AI is ruining everyone's fun.

[mysterypigeon]

fuck off :(

[moviemuncherao3]

Another spam/bot comment.

Is this what fame feels like? 😂😂