#pornbots

[hoistxthexblackxflag]

[rhube]

What happens when you don't report pornbots

What you can see here are among the most popular posts for the convin (Connor/Gavin Detroit Become Human) tag for the last month. And presumably lollipop, cityscape, rick day, eva long, dostoyevsky, and all the other random, unrelated tags added to these posts.

You can see two identical posts made by separate bots that feature a bit.ly (so, disguised, you don't know whether the address is safe/where you're going) link to a website that contains an image of a pretty young woman (but who knows what else).

Each post is liked by about a dozen other bots, and only bots. (I reported them all, so can confirm their profiles were obviously those of bots/porn bots.) Some of them even use the same image in the pfp. Some are developed blogs full of porn images, some are clearly newer and don't even have a pfp yet. They are all gaining legitimacy from each other by the likes which act as links to their Tumblrs, and adding legitimacy to the post they have liked, which links to their ultimate goal: the site where they make money in undoubtedly dodgy ways.

They are doing this to legitimise their websites for search engines like Google, but if you don't care about that, it has the same effect in your Tumblr tags.

If we don't stop them, ALL your favourite hashtags are going to be full of meaningless posts like this, and probably porn you don't want to see (very different from porn you DO want to see).

This is why we report and block, lads. Not just because they are annoying and irrelevant to us, but because if we don't stop them they will take over this hellsite, and they very clearly do not understand the nature of the hell in which we live.

[Edit:] I didn't expect this to go beyond my feed, who already know this, but report as SPAM. I've already reblogged other people with that addition on this post twice, so I won't reblog clog up the feed again, but I'm editing the original post so if anyone sees this (who didn't see Neil Gaiman's addition that said to report as spam) they'll see it here. That's the best I can do.

[classical-memeician]

Me, going through my notifications in the morning, about to block another round of pornbots

[thebluewritingbench]

the last few bots that have followed me don't even have funky little bios anymore, they're just blank and untitled..... like at least try a little harder. tell me a little something fun about yourself before i block you baby

[jessiarts]

[Shut off last version of this post to avoid possible continual spread of misinformation that was corrected by staff. Reposting clean with corrected info]

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.

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" to feed the bots to the proper channels. 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 (the actual problem) they'll take a look, more than likely find that the blog is posting or DMing dodgy links, and dispose of it.

And I think that's it. Here's wishing you all a happy and safe blogging experience!

[UPDATE: It was suggested on another post that the bots track your IP if you click on them to send more your way. However, someone from staff corrected and said this is incorrect. They also corrected the 'guilt by association' myth that bots following you can get your blog flagged by tumblr.

That said, that trail all led to another, easier, way to report/block the bots all from your Follower Tab instead of visiting each blog separately, unfortunately it only works on desktop:

(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!

[ashedink]

I’ve had to block more pornbots in the last 48 hours than I have basically the entire rest of time I’ve spent on Tumblr.

Have they become hungrier or less discerning or what? 

I’m pretty sure they’re pornbots, at least. If they’re twitter refugees still filtering into tumblr then they clearly haven’t taken ANY welcome-to-tumblr advice because it’s all empty blogs with generic underwear/swimsuit model looking headers.

[spacehippieface]

Here we go again.

[boggblog]

Lädïêś plēàšę çâlm dœwn

[reve-nant]

fighting off swarms of pornbots like

[cauliflowertree]

[panpercyjackson]

honestly kinda homophobic how I can't ask the beautiful ladies that follow me existencial questions like which Madagascar penguin they would rather date

[abelmvada]

Tumblr gave me crabs.

[enjoymorestuff]

[jonahmagnus]

Its so evil how their taking all the good urls

[dreamingamongthestars]

is everyone else seeing pornbots everywhere in the "because you follow this tag" section or is it just me. im scrolling on my dash innocently IN PUBLIC MIND YOU and then i see a full picture of ass becuase i follow the chemistry tag

[jellyfishsaliva]

Never thought I would miss the time when pornbots would just follow you and you had to get rid of them like a game of whack a mole. At least then you weren't bombarded with pornography and links, that most definitely lead to a virus, while browsing followed tags