#scraper bot

[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

[1794]

coat made from denim, with cotton lining; machine- and hand-stitched, c. 1855. FIDM Museum

detail shots:

reverse waist; seam/buttonhole detail

underside of collar; pocket/flap

armscye + lining; front view

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

[follies-fr]

No wonder why Coli keeps crashing. Christ.

[lavender-long-stories]

I have unlocked my stories. I thought about it and I think I don't give enough of a shit about hiding my hobby works from those who want to read for the smaller chance of my work geting scraped.

I understand the people who do which is why I locked them. Stand by them, seeing your hard work stolen hurts.

Enjoy the work, and if you see my work anywhere else but AO3 (accept uploaded by the one person I gave translate permission naoko-ichigo) you have my permission to tell them that they are a big jerk (those exact words) for stealing.

💜💜💜

[space-spring]

Tumblr Poll Automation

If anyone's ever looking for an easy way to handle running tournaments or otherwise creating large amounts of polls on tumblr, I just created a workflow using the browser extension Automa that will automatically create and queue up polls based on the data in a Google Sheet.

I've only tested it in Firefox + haven't rigorously tried to break it with different inputs, so there might still be some bugs to be worked out. If you try this out and it breaks, absolutely let me know and I'll take a look!

[purpleskelet0n]

I'm gonna start seriously rethinking my rules for reposting art, just had to send baby's first DMCA!

please don't put my mlp art on a booru specifically for anthro horse porn.

Update: the people were very nice and respectful and made sure it wouldn't happen again!

[roscolate]

Heads-up to my Ao3 lovelies! 👆🏻

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.

[sociocosmos]

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[8pxl]

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BLUESKY

Hiya! Curious about joining bluesky but intimidated by all the features? Already on bluesky but want to learn more? Then welcome to my quick guide on getting started and navigating bluesky!~

What is Bluesky?

it’s a social media site that’s owned by no single person or company. it's aim is to bring back the early days of twitter before bots, elon musk or algorithms took over. Personally I find the site really cozy, wholesome, and engaging. my Bluesky account for example

What’s unique about Bluesky?

→ CUSTOMIZATION: ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎your timeline is very easy to control. There’s tons of options, so be sure to go through each tab in your settings. some options include: turning off autoplay, changing the order in which threaded replies show, changing DM settings, content preferences and lots of visual app settings.

→ MODERATION LISTS: human made, mass blocklists. These are public lists of accounts that when you subscribe to you automatically block or mute everyone in that specific blocklist. A great way to avoid unwanted content, and interactions. ✦ Moderation lists I recommend will be below the cut

→ STARTER PACKS: recommendation lists on who to follow, made by users. You can even curate your own starter pack of recommendations! ✦ Starter pack recommendations will be below the cut

→ FEEDS: public timelines, basically. There are a lot of feeds you can join, or you can even create your own. I made a feed featuring just my pixel art so it doesn’t get cluttered with text posts or other photos in my media tab. ✦ I’ll post feeds I recommend below and link you to a tutorial on how to create your own feed

→ BLOCKING/MUTING: bluesky has a great blocking system. When you block someone they can no longer see, or interact with you. They also have a feature to make your blog inaccessible unless logged in. you can also mute specific people, delete post replies, and even detach your post from a reblog. You can also mute specific words, phrases, tags etc.

→ NSFW: bluesky allows NSFW content, including artwork, porn, lewds etc. They also have a great moderation page to avoid the content completely, censor the content, or show it if you’d wish. ✦ just go to settings > moderation > toggle on NSFW settings and it’ll let you heavily moderate.

→ LABELS: this is a really cool feature on the site, you can subscribe to certain pages that enable a lot of fun/useful labels that help you in different ways! (like pronoun tags, artist tags etc) ✦ Labels to browse will be posted below

→ COMMUNITIES: the vastly diverse communities really feel like the best parts of tumblr. since you can so heavily curate your experience, it can really feel like a calming oasis. Mine is mostly artists, and other creatives.

there’s also a large community of professional artists, art directors, authors, celebrities, and even the best shitposters from twitter. the app really is what you make of it but it’s thriving right now.

RECOMMENDATIONS & LINKS BELOW ⬎

→ MODERATION LISTS:

HATE SPEECH: NAZIS | MAGA | MAGAv2 | MAGAv3 | TRANSPHOBES & HOMOPHOBES | FAR RIGHT | FAR RIGHTv2 | FAR RIGHTv3 | ELON MUSK FANBOYS | ANTI-BLACK | ANTI-VAX

NFT/AI/CRYPTO: MASTERLIST | AI/NFT | AI/NFTv2 | AI FANBOYS | CRYPTO | NFTs

SPAM/SCAMMERS: SPAMBOTS | BOTS | CONTENT SCRAPERS | CONTENT FARMING

✦ to block or mute everyone in the blocklist at once, click subscribe in the top right corner:

→ STARTER PACKS:

ART: PIXEL ART | PIXEL ARTv2 | WOMEN OF PIXEL ART | BADASS DIGITAL ARTISTS | MAGIC THE GATHERING ARTIST | PAINTERS OF BLUESKY | INDIE COMIC CREATORS | LGBTQIA+ COMIC CREATORS | WEBCOMICS ULTIMATE COLLECTION

GENERAL: WOMEN OF BSKY | AUTHORS | LGBTQ NEWS

SHITPOSTERS: JUNIPER | JUNIPERv2 | MASTERLIST | SCIENCE SHITPOSTERS

✦ for more niche starter packs, use the search function. search your specific interest and ‘starter pack’ and you’ll find some!

→ FEEDS:

DISCOVER | WHATS TRENDING | MENTIONS | ART | TRENDING ART

THE GRAM: a timeline for exclusively image posts from those you follow. no textposts etc. ONLYPOST: similar to the gram, it shows a timeline of only those you follow. no reposts, just original posts. 📌: a way to bookmark posts. just reply with the pin emoji.

✦ there’s tons of others feeds as well! just use the feed tab and you can browse feeds or search for specific ones.

✦ TUTORIAL ON HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM FEED FOR YOUR ART/POSTS

→ LABELS:

SKYWATCH: most popular label. Lots of useful labels!

AI Labels: identifies AI users, can also enable hiding the posters.

Pronouns: self explanatory but useful. can add a badge with your pronouns!

✦ you can search for additional label bots on bluesky!

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

✦ EXPIRIENCE ENHANCING TOOLS RECS ✦ CLEARSKY: TRACK BLOCKS AND BLOCKLISTS ✦ SKYFEED: CREATE CUSTOM FEEDS EASILY ✦ use the block function often. do not entertain trolls or hate speech. ✦ as well as starter packs, there’s also lists! lists can be used in the same way to create curated lists of accounts. it’s a good way to keep track of specific genres of posters you’re interested in, and finding new ones! ✦ hashtags: use them! they’re beneficial in boosting your post. you can even link hashtags in your bio making you easier to find. another method of making you more visible is if you post an ‘interest’ post! basically just type things you’re interested in and it’ll help people find you / vice versa ! ✦ update your profile first thing, like bio avi etc. make a small post so people know you're real. interact and engage! the communities there are so welcoming!

I think that covers abt everything i wanted to cover! Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading lol

[scotchfairy]

Will not lie. When I saw these frames of industrial grade BS, my first though was: you've been sucked up into a giant SSD (random read is easier without moving parts).

What "Dazai" is babbling almost, but not quite makes sense. Time is usually considered the 4th dimension, but living beings only experience that dimension in one direction. In fact, pretty much everything above sub-atomic particles has the arrow of time pointing from the past to the future.

When you get into strings theory and 15 dimensions or so (it's been a couple decades since I took classes for this), you get dimensions that are folded into themselves at sub-atomic level.

But yeah, the urge to yell, "Quit obfuscating! I know you just uploaded them onto a cloud server!" has been in my mind for a while now. 😸

atsushi real as hell for pulling this face when someone tries to explain more space time bullshit to him. me too king im also feeling like that.

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[inexplicifics]

Hi, I just read about this dubious website that seems to steal fics from Ao3 and turns them into AI generated audios. I wanted to check if any of my fics are there and found your "Flung to Catch a Star". It's the first fic that pops up when you search for 'Cahir'. That's the website: https://word-stream.com

Here is the reddit post with more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/1hkrj10/netflix_of_audiobooks_scrapes_thousands_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Probably there are more of your fics, and from the reddit post it appears that they do not ask for the authors' consent. Just wanted to let you know. If you already know or gave your consent, just ignore this. If you did not give your consent, sorry this happened to you. These sites are so annoying.

Thank you; I've sent them a takedown notice and a very annoyed email, and we'll see what comes of that.

For the record, my blanket permission statement EXPLICITLY DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY AI USES of my work, and if you find my fic somewhere other than AO3 (or Tumblr, I suppose), and they're charging money for it, I do not approve.

Pfeh, scraper bots. A pox on all their houses.

[ao3scrapesearch]

Thank you so much for the AI scrape search tool. I am not sure if you have answered this question before but in case not: I always thought that locking fics to logged in users was a safe bet. and all my fics were locked, but it appears 36 of them got scraped anyways. Do you know what enables the AI to scrape them? are there additional measures I could take to prevent it happening besides using an unrevealed collection?

Thanks in advance! i really appreciate that you took the time to make this

Aw man, this is something that's bothered me since long before this recent scrape.

There's this common advice out there that user-locking your fics will protect them, and that's just never been the case. The only thing user-locking does is require all readers to have an account. I can get a new AO3 account in less than 5 minutes. Even if I couldn't find someone to give me an invite code (which many, many people will, even complete strangers), it's only a couple days to wait to be auto-approved. Once you have an account, you have access to the locked fics for as long as you can keep that account from getting flagged for suspicious activity. To avoid that, you just have to limit the rate at which you're scraping. Do it slow enough, and you'll never be flagged as a bot account.

The public works are only a more popular target because it's easier to scrape them quickly.

(And to be clear, this isn't meant to shit on the people who were passing around the advice to lock your fics! They saw something they thought would protect people and were kind enough to spread the word. It unfortunately just isn't the reality.)

I try to keep up regularly with AO3's terms of service, and the last I checked, there's no blanket ban on scraping. I personally use a scrape tool on my own statistics page daily, and that's 100% within the allowed terms of service. It's my stats page, so obviously, I'm logged in to do that. Different scrapers use different tools, and I don't know anything about what mass scrapers stealing other people's fics do, but I know for my own personal one, this is the only bit of code I needed to add to handle logging in to do my personal scrape.

For FFN:

In people language, this says "Pop up an error to tell Skyler to login to FFN and try again." I have to do this because FFN has anti-bot stuff on their login page that I'm sure some people could get around, but I'm an amateur and I sure can't do that.

AO3 is even easier because the code can just log in for you if you're not logged in, and AO3 doesn't do CAPTCHA. Scribbling out my NSFW pseud because I am NOT outing my weird kinks to you guys, sowwy.

That code takes maybe 5 minutes to write and test. That's why locking your fics isn't a guarantee, because it's that easy to just log in and then set your scrape tool to go slow enough to not be flagged.

So far, the only things I've seen that look effective are unrevealed collections and not posting fic at all, but I'm still trying to look into other options. (I was hoping to look faster, but it's been insane at work so I haven't had time to do much else!)

[ageless-aislynn]

I don’t ever want to discourage commenting on fics, quite the opposite! And if you write comments in a similar style, don’t feel like you have to stop. Just add one little thing in, as I saw in one of the other comments: mention the name of one of the characters. These spammer bot things aren’t actually reading the fics; if they were they would’ve known that the “fic” of mine they complimented so profusely for my way with words and plot and all that was actually a VID. 🙄 So just add in a name of the character or just some other identifying word/phrase/name that let’s the author know you really did read the fic. 😉

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

They are all 3 sentences long

Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation

Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever

No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story

The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate