leave his stupid ass alone! he's trying his best!

leoreturns:

Will it hit a million notes today?

Will it hit 2 million notes today?

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

Apparently, I have 9 invitations available, and I think I've used one of them ever, so if anyone out there wants to make an AO3 account, just DM me and I'll send you an invite. ✌️

Every jedi faces the dark side. ... Well, you tried, Cal.

cal please chill out, you're making it hard to teach

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

"no attachments" in SW literally just means "don't be selfish and possessive". that's it. that's all there is. doesn't mean jedi can't have friends and loved ones. they can. just. don't be possessive and selfish about it. don't murder thousands of people in an effort to save one.

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:

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 :)

For comparison, this is the one I received.

Here are some more examples fellow writers allowed me to share:

As you can see, these comments all the match the description above. Also they seem to be weirdly obsessed with AI and this entire operation may be an attempt to promote writing AI - which, if true, is disgusting on several levels.

(If any of the people with the AO3 usernames in question happen to see this: Don't worry, we're all sure it wasn't you, no hard feelings and sorry that a bot stole your name for hate comments. The names are only shown as proof that they are indeed stolen)

Oh I was just wondering why I got a weird comment today!

This is mine. Looking at the pattern, it is definitely a bot. Stealing usernames and posting as guests under that.

I was upset for a hot minute, replied asking what did they mean... Turns out I shouldn't have bothered.

Thank you for the addition! This certainly paints a picture - they're claiming that the work of actual human authors is subpar (the toddler comment on mine and the human comment on yours) and/or bring up AI.

Sorry this happened and I hope you're feeling better now💕 personally, I do believe this work was written by a human being and a lovely too!🫂💗

I don't think they're so much trying to get people to use AI to write fics - there seems to be some sort of a scam where the bots encourage commenters to put a fic through their 'AI scanner' to check if it was written by a robot.

They're literally trying to get readers to do the work of scraping fics for them.

i subscribe to the 'kallus doesn't cut his hair again after joining the rebellion' book club

Yesssssssss

i dont have a caption for you lol i'll let shanks's heart eyes speak for themselves 🫶

(source)

no no no, this part is from The Hobbit

me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home

me when I get home:

me every single week: I'll do it on the weekend!

me the entire weekend:

i'm keeping you in the time loop. it's the only way i know how to keep you safe. trapping you here, in the last day that you're alive, ignorant of what's to come as the sun sets. i dread each minute, a countdown to the end, but live in relief as all the blood washes away, all the would-be scars fade, and the tears dry before they have a chance to fall. but the memory of you dying in my arms remains, and so i'm keeping you in the time loop

(you figured out i'm keeping you in a time loop. you ask me to let you go every day now. i can't i can't i can't i can't i can't i)

Cal Kestis 💚