hindsightseeing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hindsightseeing) wrote2026-02-10 02:15 pm
hindsightseeing) wrote2026-02-10 02:15 pm
Entry tags:
Here we go again.
A bit late on this one, I think, but for those who may not have heard about it:
The spambots messing around with AO3 are, once again, upping their game.
The longer this goes on, the more grateful I am that, when I went scorched earth on my old AO3 account and made my new one, the default comment settings was 'Archive Users Only' and I never bothered to change it. I suspect this is probably why I've thus far remained spam-free.
I keep thinking I should probably bite the bullet and lock down all my stuff like most others are doing... but I'd like to avoid that for as long as possible. When you're basically the only one still writing for a thing, you want to keep as much of the joy for that thing as public as possible, you know?
The spambots messing around with AO3 are, once again, upping their game.
The longer this goes on, the more grateful I am that, when I went scorched earth on my old AO3 account and made my new one, the default comment settings was 'Archive Users Only' and I never bothered to change it. I suspect this is probably why I've thus far remained spam-free.
I keep thinking I should probably bite the bullet and lock down all my stuff like most others are doing... but I'd like to avoid that for as long as possible. When you're basically the only one still writing for a thing, you want to keep as much of the joy for that thing as public as possible, you know?
no subject
I locked my fics down to avoid them being scraped by AI and/or people because there were a few 'entrepreneurs' trying to steal fics from AO3 and sell them for money/use them to train AI.
No thank you very much! I write fanfics as a fun hobby for myself and other fans, not for random people to steal and make money out of things I've spent hours carefully crafting.
Just my personal view, I don't like others profiting from my work.
no subject
I deleted over a decade's worth of work, in no small part because of the AI-scraping nonsense when it first happened, and it's taken a very long time to crawl back to the mindset of "to hell with them, I'm not going to let them take this away from me".
Fanworks are not "content" to be farmed or sold or fed into machines, they're the manifestation of our love for the things that bring us joy, and the sole purpose of places like AO3 is to share them with other people who also derive joy from those things.
I really wish there was a better solution... but I guess, right now, the biggest act of resistance we have in the face of a seemingly endless army of bots is to just keep doing the work and sharing the love and being as unapologetically human as we possibly can.
no subject
That is the perfect summary of what fanworks are! Exactly. They are not 'content.'
This is the best resistance indeed. Keep trying to be human and connecting with other humans and fight off the bots and heartlessness.
😊
no subject
no subject
Would restricting comments to users-only help at all? As I understand it, there are already a few logged-in bots sneaking around, but if it can reduce the influx even a little, might be worth a shot?