#ao3 spam bot attack

[xiaokuer-schmetterling]

ao3--spam bots in the comments again ???

okay. so i just got this comment and it's super weird, says i left a comment on their work (not visible btw. maybe already deleted?) but the comment was left as a guest using my main ao3 pseud for their name? 🧐🤔😖

anybody else getting comments like that ???

(more details under the cut)

if you're curious -- here's the comment plus my reply

weirdest thing is. i'm a podficcer and i've not written any fanfics! my only posted work under my main ao3 pseud is a how-to guide about podfics

anyhow, i checked with some podficcer acquaintances and the prevailing theory is that spammers are trying to get ao3 authors to pull down their works to make them easier to steal ???!!! ☠️🤬😤

so. stay strong fic authors !!! ignore weird & hateful comments and keep doing your author thing! 🫡💖‼️✨

[liber-what-ia]

Omg please GET LOST you vultures

[cartoonking1]

Why are people like this that they would make some thing this nasty ?

Yet another AO3 bot situation - please spread the word!

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

Please spread the word to other AO3 users! And if you see mean guest comments on other fics, maybe let the author know that it's probably from a bot and not a real person who thinks their writing is bad.

[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.)

[zuppizup]

Hey guys, if you're getting incredibly rude/negative comments on your fics (many/most of which seem to have nothing to do with the plot/are directed at characters/pairings that aren't even in the fic) it seems likely to be another bot attack.

Mark as spam so that AO3 staffers can see what's happening and to what scale. This will also delete the comment from your fic.

[ispiralis]

Uh, Ao3 is suffering a hate comment bot attack and the bots are using real accounts' names to disguise.

I just wanted to say I never and will NEVER leave a hate comment on your stuff, so if you see a guest with my pseud please report spam it, that is not me

[reliablejoukido]

Uh hey, someone shared this on twitter and there's a negative comment bot on AO3 around attacking random people/fanfics, so if you or anyone you know get something vague with two sentences that makes no sense to you and are negative from a random guest (not a legit registered user) -- report it as spam.

the r/AO3 has examples of it (i will show some of them from the r/AO3 thread here so you can get that i meant)

anyway i hope you're doing well ;v;

Thanks so much friend! I've been following the situation on reddit too and it's really disheartening when someone receives one of these messages without knowing it's a bot. If anyone sees this, make sure to tell your friends here, discord, twitter, wherever, so that they don't think they are getting legit hate comments. Anyway, thanks for spreading the word! 💖

And like I've said before (I'll reblog the post from my personal blog in a minute), you are SO MUCH more than the comments you receive on your fics, whether they are bots or not.

[hmslusitania]

just wanted to let you know that the link in your bio for your works doesn’t work (didn’t for me at least) 😭 it only shows your gifts and bookmarks (thought you deleted all your fics and nearly had heart attack)

Thank you for your concern! I keep all my fics archive locked so you do have to be logged in to ao3 to read them, which is why it says 0 fics and why it says I only have 87 bookmarks instead of the actual number which is 120 or so, and why there’s only 6 gifts instead of 7, because some of those fics are archive locked as well.

It is about the only measure that can be taken against web crawlers that want to use ao3 to feed into LLMs and “”””ai””””. And it also helps prevent agains the recent wave of spam bots that have been leaving nastigrams on people’s fics for whatever reason

But the fics are all still there the moment you login to ao3!

[eredins-wife]

🔕Spam Trolls AI Bots on Ao3

Thanks for @crazyaboutto for the Information

There are reports that Authors have been "Attacked" for what it is...

🔕🔕🔕🔕

🔕🔕🔕🔕

Writer friend, be alert 🔕 Feel free to mark it as spam.💖

[nothoughtsjustmhaandotherthings]

Last year my wife (AO3) was cruelly taken away from me (spammed by bots in a DDoS attack) for endless days and nights (about 10 hours) before finally returning home battle-scarred (now there’s a CloudFlare setup to protect future attacks of a similar nature)

A HUGE thank you to the volunteers who kept us updated and worked round the clock to get the archive up and running again!! They’re the real heroes

[ukenceto]

moots and followers alike, apparently ao3 is under bot attack with hate comments. explains my experience yesterday if you get a super rude guest comment accusing you of using AI to write, know it's 99% chance it's this spam (though ao3 have already temporarily disabled guest comments for the entire site)

[ao3feed-p5-boyslove]

As you may have noticed, Ao3 going up and down repeatedly seems to have agitated the bots, causing them to make the same posts over and over again.

I've decided to temporarily turn off the bots, until Ao3 has definitively fended off the DDOS attack and is no longer going up and down, so as to avoid spamming the tags and your dashes.

A little late for that, actually, but you should have thought of that before following a nlog with such a lazy mod.

Maybe I'll try and tinker with the bots when it's come time to turn them back on, see if I can fix the formatting. I'm not too hopeful, but wish me luck.

[beck-a-leck]

There's been a spate of bots going around whose sole purpose seems to be getting people to delete their works from AO3.

Either by attacking their pride and self-esteem by leaving outright mean comments disparaging the writing quality or accusing them of using AI to write (insinuating the story is poorly written).

Or by leaving threats and insinuations such as above that a person's work doesn't "belong" on Archive of Our Own amd is going to be deleted anyways.

They're just malicious for the sake of being malicious. And their purpose seems to be tricking people into deleting their works.

And to be even more malicious the bot comments scrape valid usernames from AO3 (though they're always guest comments) trying to give themselves some credibility. And probably hoping there's that one in a million chance the writer will recognize the "commenter" and stir up fandom drama.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but it's been a while since I've seen concerted trolling efforts like this. It sucks to see it show up.

Take care of yourselves.

Restrict your stories to be readable by registered users only.

Enable comment moderation.

Report messages like that immediately as spam through AO3 (don't mark the email as spam unless you want all AO3 emails to go to spam).

Don't feed the trolls. Don't engage. Don't assume the alleged username is actually who sent you a mean message like that.

Bots are not registered users.

If a registered user is harrassing or trolling you there are tools to employ against them.

And remember that your stories are worth sharing. Only you can tell the story in your head in your own particular way, and by that merit enough, it is worth sharing. It is worth archiving.

And archiving is what Archive of Our Own exists for.

Wow, now there's a bot going around on Ao3 telling people that the "moderators" will delete works from "deprecated" fandoms and impose bans.

Fearmongering bullshit, but it's fearmongering bullshit that seems to be taking advantage of the recent spotlight series in order to trick authors into deleting their fics.

Just. Why.

What the hell does anyone get out of making these bots.

[erinptah]

mini link roundup: AO3 bots, Mona Lisa artists

AO3 stuff: “PSA: there’s a negative comment bot active right now [���] Mark them as spam so that AO3 can start filtering them out.“ Cloudflare does a retrospective on last year’s DDOS attacks: “Within three hours of applying to Project Galileo, the OTW was accepted into the project, configured their nameservers to point to Cloudflare, and successfully got the AO3 site back online. According to…

[write-and-wander]

FAQs

some answers to some commonly asked questions, and a little more :)

general fic info:

the norm: - I tend to write in 2nd person or 3rd person POV, usually focusing on the relationship between an OC/reader (with which I avoid using Y/N) and a fictional character. I'm open to doing ships on occasion, but as an aspiring author, I enjoy the creativity of OCs more, so I lean that way. my boundaries: - I won't write for real people- only fictional characters. I also only write for characters I feel I know well; I like to try to keep characters consistent with canon. - I'm asexual, and feel uncomfortable with writing smut, so sexual intimacy will only ever be implied. however, I don't shy away from mature/heavy topics, so be sure to pay attention to warnings. - I don't endorse censorship or policing of any kind. this is fiction! remember: don't like, don't read.

schedule:

- I'm currently working on my doctorate in counseling psychology, and as with many fanfic writers, life happens sometimes. because of that, I don't have the capacity to commit to a writing schedule. however, I love what I do, so I write as often as I can!

asks & dms

- my asks are always open- I enjoy feedback, am happy to answer questions, and will always appreciate requests, along with just about anything else. I may not get to writing your requests (I can only follow inspiration when it strikes), but I appreciate it all nonetheless. obviously, harassment and spam are not tolerated. - DMs are always open for chats- so don't be a stranger!

fandoms:

- I tend to write for Marvel, Star Wars, and Baldur's Gate 3. I'm also a huge fan of The Witcher, D&D, DC, Critical Role, Attack on Titan, Invincible, and Lord of the Rings, amongst a variety of other things. I may post about my other interests intermittently, and will always reblog a good fic or fanart for my top fandoms when I come across them.

Ao3:

- I don't maintain tag lists; subscribing to my profile or my works on Ao3 is the best way to keep track of when I update works or post something new.

- I bookmark fic recommendations to my Ao3 profile if you ever want to know what I'm reading & what I recommend!

- my fics on Ao3 are locked (only visible to registered users) due to repeated issues with bots scraping & stealing fics. it's a means to do what little I can to protect my work. please be encouraged to take this opportunity to make an account! it only requires an email (even a burner) and grants you plenty of perks- like subscribing & bookmarks :)

etc.:

- this isn't my main blog, so I use reblogs, chats, and comments as often as I can. this doesn't mean I keep my main a secret; I just like to keep things organized by blog :)

- I try to tag things pretty consistently and thoroughly:

my miscellaneous posting will always be queued up under #queue sweet generous thing.

to support writers, I reblog my favorite fics here, queueing them up under #w&w fic recs.

finally, for the occasional casual/personal posts, I tag them under #w&w cleo.

feel free to filter out those tags if you just want to see my works.

That's about it- feel free to shoot me an ask if you didn't find an answer you were looking for :)

[silurisanguine]

There are two possible reasons for the hate spam

1- Hate for Ao3 in general.

2 - To get an author to abandon the fic so it can be more easily stolen. It's similar to the recent bot attacks trying to get people to orphan their work for the same reason.

These bot comments are pretty easy to spot though. They will always be vague, never saying anything specific about your actual work. They will sound as if they are written by AI. And they will be written by a 'guest'. Ignore what they say and report them.

hey uh new type of ao3 spam comment just dropped. (I know it's spam because the fic they left this comment on . doesn't have chapters. lmfao). Report this kinda comment as spam and don't take it personally it is literally recycled bullshit