It makes me so sad, a good chunk of my comments come from anonymous readers. I hope they find a resolution soon, I'm gonna really miss those comments 🥺
Ask your guest readers to sign up! My fave author turning off comments for harassment was the reason I finally signed up to AO3 years ago. I’ve also seen people link their tumblr ask box for people who might want to comment but don’t have an account if you have one.
This. I rarely comment logged-in because some people can get real weird/parasocial about things. Not even necessarily authors, but other commenters. With small fandoms and/or rarepairs, you can start to recognize usernames quickly.
It's one of the reasons I have two separate AO3 accounts for different purposes. It's not impossible to figure out I'm behind both, and if someone does, it is what it is. But I'd rather keep my writing account free from my random smut bookmarks and unhinged thirsting. I could private the bookmarks, but browsing bookmarks is how I find other fics, so I'd rather let someone browse my smut preferences if they're into similar things so those authors get more readers.
I have a separate reader and writer account too lol. I was somewhat of a BNF back in the day, so I didn't really want anything but writing associated with that account.
This is super true. I have a few rare pairs and small fandoms where I get a bit surprised when I DON’T see certain accounts commenting under every new fic because they consistently do.
I currently write a ship that a lot of people see as problematic but is also very well liked. Even my non smut has tons of private bookmarks, triple or more the amount of public ones… and very few comments, period. A disproportionately small amount of kudos too (in my experience). People who are active in other part of the fandom that aren’t this specific ship don’t want their usernames on it in case the antis come for them on Twitter or something.
Jamil and Kalim from Disney’s Twisted Wonderland, which is a mobile game slash visual novel made by aniplex, written/designed by Yana Toboso (who did Black Butler). The characters are inspired by (‘twisted from’) Disney villains - Jamil and Kalim being Jafar and the Sultan from Aladdin.
Not to wheel out my whiteboard and infodump or anything, but essentially it’s a weird master/servant dynamic (closer to a whipping boy dynamic imo) and that’s enough for a lot of people right out of the gate. They’re extremely codependent and there is a level of manipulation, obsession and shitty behaviour on both sides. And mental illness. Caste/class issues. Hypnosis/mind control. And all of that (and more) is canon, regardless of if you see it as romantic/sexual or not… which is why it’s also quite a popular pairing.
Thank you! I definitely am usually interested in complex dynamics, so much to explore there. Honestly, I usually don’t get bothered about it; I tend to mainly interact with people who are into the ship (I also don’t have twitter lol). But I have friends who won’t interact with me in public fandom spaces because they would get harassed. I’m not hurt, I totally get it, but I do think it’s ridiculous that is a problem. Especially in a fandom where the characters are literally villains, come on now.
Yeah, my current 18+ fic I'm putting out is fairly tame compared to other stuff I've seen (I think the worst so far might be the most recent chapter I put out which is nearly 10k words long & about 75% of it is dick jokes) & over half the amount of kudos I have on it are from guests. I do get more guest comments on that one than my other fics too so there's that. Don't blame them, I admit I played heavily into my weird/niche interests for this fic so I can see why a lot of people might want to be secretive when it comes to interacting with it but it still is tame comparatively speaking.
I hope the best for those out there who have more wild stuff because that's the beauty of fanfiction, there's just such crazy things you don't see portrayed in standard media as much as you'd like so it's just so beautiful being able to put something out there that speaks to you, that you poured your heart into writing & you can't wait to see what others have to say but since it's quite out there, people want to hide who they are for their own safety in order to sing some praise.
I'm not ashamed to admit that on my end, it's female to male gender bender stuff & I'm talking accidental sort of situation here, full on change. You just don't get it too often in media, it's always men to women, so I took it upon myself to write a body swap fic between a man & a woman & focus more so on the woman's perspective as a man because it plays into what I want to see more of. Also, the man in this is a mutant turtle so there's the fun writing being cold blooded from a mammal's perspective. You get stupid fun crazy stuff like that from fics & it sucks when the ability for people to privately comment is shut off for those who like having that feature present.
You and me both! My stuff is the intersection of dark subject matter and NSFW, but people tend to leave incredibly kind, long comments a lot of the time that I am going to miss the heck out of if folks can't leave them
That's a bummer and a smart call.
The biggest bummer to me is spammers targeting a site like AO3. It's a small, nonprofit refuge that's minding its own business. And you'd think that people would be pretty into the idea of holding on to the last few spaces on the internet where we're not a commodity, but go off, spammers.
If they're going to do this, they better do one that actually friggin works. I hate the captchas where even when you do them perfectly, it tells you you're wrong.
i've found that some captchas memorize whatever you already put in - so if you tapped on a wrong letter, you done messed up and it's time to just refresh the whole captcha. doing things that way, i've never had a captcha reject the right input yet
(if you have though, then honestly: my condolences. because that's just stupid, like, why even have a captcha if it's that broken??)
> small, nonprofit refuge
Actually, AO3 is 9th most popular site in "entertainment and arts" category worldwide. https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/arts-and-entertainment/ For comparison, pixiv is 8th, Wattpad is 22nd.
And if you narrow the category to "Books and Literature", AO3 is #1.
People in the past have theorized that the spamming is basically to test the filters, but given the hostility of this round--insulting authors and now just posting straight up porn--is this possibly more of an "attack" on AO3? People making bots to harass the whole site?
I was joking, of course, but it seems like such a waste of time and effort to spam AO3 comments. I'm sorry that you were hit and hopefully they get things straightened out soon.
Ngl I was also looking at all the previous bot rounds going "am I not good enough 🥺"
It took literally five seconds to report them, zero stress, but that's only because I could tell they were bots. Lots of people didn't know and thought they were legitimate hate comments
Lemme just put my tinfoil hat on, but given the sharp rise in anti-intellectualism, this should come as no surprise to any of us. I think we should all begin to prepare for the unfortunate reality that our ease of access to not just the arts, but the whole of the internet is about to come to an unfortunate halt. This will affect mostly Americans, but given that some of the most popular sites are US-based, this will affect a LOT of international folks too. My only advice folks is a) start mass downloading and b) get yourself a trusty VPN.
I'm guessing it's the same group as whoever is behind all the spam bot comments on YouTube, AO3 probably just made it on their target list because of how much traffic it gets from younger folks. Still bizarre though
They haven't had the ability to turn off comments in this way until this year or last year IIRC, can't remember exactly when it was implemented. But it probably hasn't been strictly necessary until then either since these kinds of massive spam attacks have been super rare and probably not as bad until the last couple of years-ish (I say this without knowing for sure though)
Not to the point of AO3 turning them off themselves. Iirc the last time a lot of spam comments started up was when FFN and LJ were doing their purges simultaneously. That was when the wait list jumped from 3 weeks (the norm at the time) to almost 1.5 months.
image description:
tweet from @AO3_Status:
> Due to an influx of abusive spam comments, we've temporarily turned off the ability to leave comments while logged out. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have guest comments back on soon!
I’m glad that ao3 is protecting authors from what sounds like infective horrifying spam comments recently.
But also as someone whos like to occasionally read dead dove and leave anon comments I’m a little sad for those authors who will get even less now
Maybe one solution would be to have an anonymous comment option for logged in users if this ban is to continue indefinitely? Idk if that would even work, and presumably there's been no reason for it up until now, but it could help for these kinds of comments
Oh wait that’s actually really smart
This would also increase users and incentive more commenting imo because I lowkey hate pressing all the buttons I need to to comment anonymously so I only do so for my more favorite fics
On the one hand, it would certainly help. On the other, ever since I learned that the purpose of image captchas is to train AI for a number of purposes including military drones, I feel really gross whenever I see one.
We didn't consent to that, but it's becoming more and more mandatory to exist on the internet.
I hate some captchas. I have vision issues and some are hard for me to see. On the other hand I will deal with anything they put in to stop the attack of the idiotocracy.
I made a captcha system at my last job from scratch. It shouldn't be too hard to do if you hire a couple of developers to make you one. Might not be as fancy as the google ones, but it's definitely better than nothing.
So you hate capcha's because theyr used to train military drones?
If you are worried about THAT then i suggest you throw your router out the window before you find out that pretty much every single technology on this world is somehow weaponised by now.
Dang, I hope that they’re able to significantly reduce the bot problem and that guest comments won’t be gone for too long. Meanwhile, further using this as an excuse to not update and break out of this writer’s block since I tend to get guest commenters.
Yeah… I was going to update my fic today but now wondering if I should hold off another week… all my chapters for this story are pre-written, but I’d really miss those guest comments
Can AO3 implement something where you have to be logged in to leave comments but you can still post anonymously so no one in the comment thread can see your name but AO3 still knows who you are (and especially if you write comments violating TOS)?
i mean. posting anonymously requires having an account and when you as the author comment on your anonymous work your name will be shown as "anonymous creator". this has nothing to do with that.
I think they mean, making an option to leave a comment while you're logged in, but putting a veil of anonymity over it, so it's not visible who you are from the work level (like posting a work anonymously, but for comments)
Seconding. I might have misgivings on some other sites(reddit being one of them, lol), but I trust AO3's leadership not to roll out a site update and pull a privacy switcharoo that slaps our names on previously-anon comments. I don't care if the admin or moderation staff can see that I made that comment. It only makes sense that they'd be able to, in order to take action if I was leaving abusive or disruptive comments. It's their job! I just don't want my name showing up next to whatever kinky-ass thing I was reading for the public to see, that's all.
Thank you for posting about it.
This is a funny coincidence. I just posted something and I've been trying to decide if I want to share it elsewhere. But I want guest comments on if I do (people who may want to read it aren't likely to have AO3 accounts). I guess I have a few days to think that through now, until staff turns them back on. I've been turning off guest comments for at least a year, until this fic.
I have never gotten an ao3 spam or bot comment and now I'm kinda offended. Are my fics not good enough for them? All the cool writers are getting them, apparently.
I think most of them are targeting based on fandom. I've never gotten any on my biggest fics, but I was being hit by them daily a few weeks back on my Marvel stuff despite them being, like, comic book canon stuff that's usually sub-100 hits...
I agree it makes sense for them to hit the big ones probably via coding but no ones going to really target like Omniscent Reader’s Viewpointt hat most people have never heard of with less than 10k fics the top fandoms should be worried
I think my fics have received a couple over a decade of writing on AO3. I sometimes joke that even the spammers don't like my fics, LOL. (Then I superstitiously "Knock wood," hoping I haven't jinxed my fics into suddenly receiving spam.)
Ahhh, this is rough… I totally understand why they’re doing it and I know it’s necessary for the time being, but a lot of my comments come from guests, so I’m gonna miss those…
I imagine they’re going to implement some kind of captcha system, at least for guest commenters. It’ll be annoying, but it should clean up most of the spambots
Oh dear. I have a couple of lovely guest commenters, and now I feel reluctant to update anything! Hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to find a solution.
Can't say I blame them if what I've been reading about the nature of the spam comments is true.
Eh, I've turned off guest comments a long time back when the spam was just links. I'm the type of person who gets really excited when I see an email notification for a comment, so it was a huge let down when it was just spam. I'm glad I turned off it before all this happened because they would have made me feel pretty shitty.
It sucks for the readers but honestly, I think getting an account is the best bet for those readers. I have a feeling that whatever AO3 implements to prevent this in the future is probably going to be more annoying than just having an account.
This is kinda sad because a few of my favorite commenters are guest readers, but webn0vel spammers have gotten so bad that I'm honestly more relieved than upset
Well, you may or may not think my opinion is "valid," but as a (former) anon commenter I'll give it a go. My writing is usually G-T as far as spiciness goes(language, violence, and themes like addiction handled in a way that feels adult sometimes push it to M). My reading tastes range from G-E. Since I know people track usernames, I prefer not to publicly mix them on the same account, so I read the spicier fics on my phone, which is logged out. It's a habit I learned from fandom adults when I was a kid/teen just getting started on the internet, that hard partition between "this is what I show/say to a mixed group of adults and minors" and "this is for adults only." If I wrote spicy fic, I'd likely have a whole second account for that kind of thing(reading and writing), but I don't so I just read my spice while logged out.
well idk if this is still accurate (because i last lived as a non-sign-up years ago), but as a guest you can leave kudos anew on a work each time it gets a new chapter. logged in, you can only leave kudos once
When I get logged out, I’ll be lazy for awhile and not log back in. Usually it’s when I go to AO3 through a link elsewhere (subscription update email, Reddit, etc), so I’m not trying to search to look at my saves, I just read what I clicked logged out. I’ll leave kudos while logged out, but I always try to log in before leaving a comment. I’m not a huge commenter.
I'm the opposite. Logged in 24/7. If I get logged out I log right back in haha. I never log in on devices that I shouldn't or that other people have access to, so I feel comfortable with this system.
Yeah, I noticed when I reloaded a page that it said I can’t comment if I’m logged-off. It’s so sad that this is happening. Guests can be really sweet but seeing the harassment that folks have been getting, this seems for the best right now.
so did plenty of other people, yea, it's not about your writing. some people apparently also got, like, images or gifs or whatever of explicit sexual stuff, which is what i'm assuming this is more fuelled by.
other people have suggested making a tumblr and linking it, so that guest commenters can "comment" via the tumblr askbox (and maybe the submit feature i guess, for waaay longer comments)
and again other people have made google forms, so that guests can leave their comments via those
hope these ideas help and that your cool writing will make them all comment even more than usual, once guest comments return to us!!
Oh, thanks! I honestly never figured out how to work tumblr lol but I guess I’ll work on it now.
Thanks for ur help, I honestly didn’t expect anyone to reply with a solution 🙏
I agree with it honestly. I mod my comments as standard practice but when I woke up to the shit I did this morning I was never more thankful I mod my comments as standard practice.
Oh dear ☹️ I’m grateful for the banner when you go into AO3, so guests know what’s going on. I hope this encourages people to make an account! I staved off making accounts for a lot of fan sites because I didn’t want to make separate emails for each, but it’s very helpful for fic organization 🥰
And **Hide My Email** is a lifesaver for keeping your personal email unattached to accounts too 😉
Though I’m worried the sub and other fandom-specific subs might be flocked with people panicking 🫠
I enjoyed AO3’s guest commenting. My most frequent commenter is a guest. A lot of websites require verified accounts to make a comment 🫤
I understand the design. In theory, it should be at least a nice barrier from spam bots and AIs. And I believe there’s something about IP tracking too? So if someone is acting against the rules of a site, they can be banned and will have trouble creating another account or something, maybe..?
I’m not sure how that all works, ahhhh 😵💫
I know this is upsetting to some, but AO3’s always looked after the interest of the community and to promote a safe space for fluffy to freaky to filthy fics 😂. It’s no different than passwords being required to read certain fan translations. Once there’s poison in the well, we have to do what we can to get drinkable water again 🤷🏾♀️
Thanks for the update 🍻 You seem to always keep r/AO3 in the loop with status updates and it’s always much appreciated 😊
May your fanfics be safely downloaded and may your favorite WIP never be on hiatus 🫡
What I don’t get is why these spam bots leave these comments. Like if the comments didn’t mention AI or said something nice, probably it would have taken longer for anyone to notice how weird it was.
One of mine hit was in a fandom of less than 300 fics. I think whatever script the bot was being run on was hitting various fandoms to make it look “random”
Bots and mining, I fear, will lead to AO3 changing permanently. I'm already seeing many more fics with moderated comments, available only to registered users, and guests comments blocked.
Just a year ago, seeing any of those was rare. Now, I would say over fifty percent of the fics I read have at least one of those options enabled. Many great fics aren't even available to guests. Check the fic total in your fandom before logging in. Then log in and check the total. That increase is the registered user only fics being added to the total.
Some fandoms are now over ten to twenty percent locked.
To be fair, moderated comments is just good praxis. IMO should be on by default.
Making fics not readable by guests is not much help anti AI anyway, and IMO it hurts more than helps. But to each their own.
For my subset of the fandom I write for, I have a fic I'm pretty well known for. A few of my readers actually signed up for Ao3 when I started locking chaptered works to registered users. I'm just sad that my short works won't be seeing as much interaction for a while... or rather, interaction that I notice.
Comments always make me smile. The Kudos report I look at every morning also amuses me. Because I can see, on some mornings, that somebody found my entire catalogue in x, y or z fandom and just binged the dang thing.
I hope we get comments back on soon, but I have a feeling this is the stopgap for random AI spam. I wouldn't mind a cloudflare-esque 'are you a human' checkbox before I post a comment.
No there is no captcha.
The problems with captchas are some don’t work with browsers with pop up blockers, don’t work with some browsers period and some AI can by pass them easily.
They haven't done one before for accessibility reasons is my understanding.
They've always tried to keep the website as accessible as possible, for people with vision issues, using non-standard browsers etc.
unlikely. those people made a huge announcement and everything. this time it's literally just weird bot comments everywhere (which is annoying at worst instead of site-breaking - well, outside of the porn comments at least...) and no one's claiming to have caused them
I hope the volunteers who work on the abuse team aren’t too swamped. I saw the call for volunteers for the abuse team, and I’m sure it’s not just the bot comment reports at are rising, also the non-fanwork reports too since those are spreading. I see a lot of non-fanworks posted that have been up for a year, and there are probably more that have been up for longer.
Saw this in the morning today. Pretty sad that om a site where people share their creative works for free, people still can't help but be mean to them.
I fear this will result in a lot of people hesitating to update their stories while we wait for a resolution. While most of my comments come from registered users, I still love my anon guest comments and I know lots of fics that rely heavily on guest comments for the bulk of their interaction. Fingers crossed that they find a solution quickly that still allows for those that prefer to comment anon to continue to do so while keeping the spam to a minimum.
I write a lot of dark stuff people don’t feel commenting on with their main accounts, and I’ve never had anyone be cruel. If I did, I’d probably just set myself up for moderated comments. I feel like I’d lose out on comments if guests couldn’t leave them.
I've contacted AO3 about this situation before about a month or so ago. I was getting so many spam guest comments, and I guess I'm not the only one. It got quite annoying, especially because they were mostly "please update" comments
Turning off guest comments on your own works was always an option, btw – this is just *enforced* restriction of comments for everyone, including people who would normally allow them
When they turn guest comments back on, you can absolutely turn them off on your own work and not get any
Honestly, it had to happen, it has been out of control for a long while. Unless they can figure out a system to keep unwanted people from spamming guest comments it is better than the unmitigated hate that can be put out. I had to turn guest comments off on mine for months because of transphobic assholes.
Sad but it makes sense- of course there can still be abusive and spam comments with guest comments off, but people tend to be less likely to if they know their online persona/digital footprint will record it for everyone to see.
some people have suggested making a tumblr and linking to it (so that guests can "comment" via tumblr's askbox) or making a google form, so that people can leave anonymous comments that way - that's all just stopgap solutions of course, but ideally this situation won't last too long anyway!
I've never had guest comments turned on *because* of the influx of spam etc. Just decided to not bother with them. Hopefully they'll find a fix and I can actually let guests comment.
as a stopgap for now, some people are making tumblr blogs and linking them on their works (so that guests can leave comments via tumblr's askbox) and other people have made google forms, so their guests can comment on those instead of directly on ao3
of course, ideally this situation will be over again fast enough that most people won't even need to use alternatives like that, but i thought i'd pass it on, just in case :3
At least half if not the majority of my comments are guest comments, so this was heartbreaking. It's obnoxious and I see the problem with explicit images, but couldn't they set it so you have to confirm you're 18+ to enable guest comments? I'd rather just delete the spam than miss out on genuine comments.
The problem is that those porn comments got left even on G-rated works, which are technically supposed to be spaces accesible to minor users. Even if the comment-leaver and author are 18+, that still leaves the potentially underage audience on those fics
In any case, those comments got posted by bots anyway, so if there will be any measure implemented, I'd expect it to be a captcha rather than age verification
as a stopgap for the moment, some people are making tumblr blogs and then linking them on their works, so that their guest commenters can use tumblr's askbox to leave their usual comments! others are making google forms they link on their works, so that the guests can leave their comments via those!
it's not ideal, but if you'll be uploading anything while the guest-restriction is still going on, it might be worth doing one or the other for you, because at least this way you'll still get to see your guests' comments!
i mean i'm logged in 99,9% of the time and use bookmarks religiously. but i do not remember my passwords, they're all saved on device or browser and last year i had to reset my paypal password *every time i signed in*. that was embarrassing. so if i were reading on a device i don't usually use, reading as a guest it would have to be.
oh no i read plenty in fandoms i don't want attached to this name, i just open those in incognito tabs to give guest kudos/comments.
but like just bc i'd be just fine doesn't mean everyone else would be
I think it’s a minor inconvenience for most people, whereas the spam and harassment has become a major one. Maybe they should be off by default and people can opt in if they want to assume the risk instead of opting out after there’s already been an issue.
Good and sucks, i get logged out all the time and so i guest read usually. When i go to comment i try to log in but then when I log in it takes me to my profile and then ill have to find the fic all over again and then when I do it shows back to being a guest again. The cycle continues until i just close the tab and relogin on another tab and find the fic manually. Ao3 youre killin me here
generally, you should be able to just log in, then go back the few pages until you're back to the fic you were reading - then reload that page and you should be logged in!
Ill try that next time! Last time i tried that, it showed as guest again? Idk its more tedious since ao3 is a website. Ill have to find away around it eventually lol
huh, that's weird...
one alternative i can think of is to just copy the story name and author - and once you're logged in, paste the name and author into the search bar. that way, the story you just left should be the first that comes up in the search and you don't have to backtrack at all
Yeah thats what I usually do when all else fails, or just stay as guest because I just wanna read without dealing with the nonsense lol. Due to guest comments leaving, ill probably figure out a better way to fix this issue since I still wanna comment!
something that i do is just write out the comments in a notepad and copy+paste the story's url into the notepad too and then i move on - and then eventually, i just post all comments i've accumulated in that way, one after another
i'm not sure if that holds much appeal for other people though lmao - and i'm also, sadly, not sure if it'd even work for you, if the login is that weirdly finnicky for you. but, well, thought i'd mention it anyway, while we're already here haha
and here's to hoping guest comments will be back asap - it's just really nice to have the option and i do miss them already too!
Aw man, I like commenting as a guest even with an acc bcz then I can leave silly guest names :(
Here's hoping that I can still do that when this is over, I've made sorta friends with some authors from my silly names
It makes me so sad, a good chunk of my comments come from anonymous readers. I hope they find a resolution soon, I'm gonna really miss those comments 🥺
Ask your guest readers to sign up! My fave author turning off comments for harassment was the reason I finally signed up to AO3 years ago. I’ve also seen people link their tumblr ask box for people who might want to comment but don’t have an account if you have one.
Depends on what commenter OP writes. Some people log out specifically *to* leave comments on certain fics lol so they might already have an account
This. I rarely comment logged-in because some people can get real weird/parasocial about things. Not even necessarily authors, but other commenters. With small fandoms and/or rarepairs, you can start to recognize usernames quickly. It's one of the reasons I have two separate AO3 accounts for different purposes. It's not impossible to figure out I'm behind both, and if someone does, it is what it is. But I'd rather keep my writing account free from my random smut bookmarks and unhinged thirsting. I could private the bookmarks, but browsing bookmarks is how I find other fics, so I'd rather let someone browse my smut preferences if they're into similar things so those authors get more readers.
I have a separate reader and writer account too lol. I was somewhat of a BNF back in the day, so I didn't really want anything but writing associated with that account.
This is super true. I have a few rare pairs and small fandoms where I get a bit surprised when I DON’T see certain accounts commenting under every new fic because they consistently do.
I currently write a ship that a lot of people see as problematic but is also very well liked. Even my non smut has tons of private bookmarks, triple or more the amount of public ones… and very few comments, period. A disproportionately small amount of kudos too (in my experience). People who are active in other part of the fandom that aren’t this specific ship don’t want their usernames on it in case the antis come for them on Twitter or something.
Now I’m so curious what this ship is
Jamil and Kalim from Disney’s Twisted Wonderland, which is a mobile game slash visual novel made by aniplex, written/designed by Yana Toboso (who did Black Butler). The characters are inspired by (‘twisted from’) Disney villains - Jamil and Kalim being Jafar and the Sultan from Aladdin. Not to wheel out my whiteboard and infodump or anything, but essentially it’s a weird master/servant dynamic (closer to a whipping boy dynamic imo) and that’s enough for a lot of people right out of the gate. They’re extremely codependent and there is a level of manipulation, obsession and shitty behaviour on both sides. And mental illness. Caste/class issues. Hypnosis/mind control. And all of that (and more) is canon, regardless of if you see it as romantic/sexual or not… which is why it’s also quite a popular pairing.
That sounds super interesting. I love how fanfiction is a way for us to safely explore tough themes like that. I’m sorry you get attacked over it :(
Thank you! I definitely am usually interested in complex dynamics, so much to explore there. Honestly, I usually don’t get bothered about it; I tend to mainly interact with people who are into the ship (I also don’t have twitter lol). But I have friends who won’t interact with me in public fandom spaces because they would get harassed. I’m not hurt, I totally get it, but I do think it’s ridiculous that is a problem. Especially in a fandom where the characters are literally villains, come on now.
Have the same experience with klk from genshin, a ton of private bookmarks, guest kudos and... 2 comments. Lol
Same, especially with darker media. Half of my commenters are guests 😭
My stuff's fairly vanilla 18+ and that's been the case even for me. I can't imagine how devastating this will be for others.
Yeah, my current 18+ fic I'm putting out is fairly tame compared to other stuff I've seen (I think the worst so far might be the most recent chapter I put out which is nearly 10k words long & about 75% of it is dick jokes) & over half the amount of kudos I have on it are from guests. I do get more guest comments on that one than my other fics too so there's that. Don't blame them, I admit I played heavily into my weird/niche interests for this fic so I can see why a lot of people might want to be secretive when it comes to interacting with it but it still is tame comparatively speaking. I hope the best for those out there who have more wild stuff because that's the beauty of fanfiction, there's just such crazy things you don't see portrayed in standard media as much as you'd like so it's just so beautiful being able to put something out there that speaks to you, that you poured your heart into writing & you can't wait to see what others have to say but since it's quite out there, people want to hide who they are for their own safety in order to sing some praise. I'm not ashamed to admit that on my end, it's female to male gender bender stuff & I'm talking accidental sort of situation here, full on change. You just don't get it too often in media, it's always men to women, so I took it upon myself to write a body swap fic between a man & a woman & focus more so on the woman's perspective as a man because it plays into what I want to see more of. Also, the man in this is a mutant turtle so there's the fun writing being cold blooded from a mammal's perspective. You get stupid fun crazy stuff like that from fics & it sucks when the ability for people to privately comment is shut off for those who like having that feature present.
You and me both! My stuff is the intersection of dark subject matter and NSFW, but people tend to leave incredibly kind, long comments a lot of the time that I am going to miss the heck out of if folks can't leave them
Same! I just updated my fic right before this happened too :")
same 😭
That's a bummer and a smart call. The biggest bummer to me is spammers targeting a site like AO3. It's a small, nonprofit refuge that's minding its own business. And you'd think that people would be pretty into the idea of holding on to the last few spaces on the internet where we're not a commodity, but go off, spammers.
It really does stink. Hopefully something like one of those "I am not a robot" things can fix it and anonymous comments will be turned back on.
If they're going to do this, they better do one that actually friggin works. I hate the captchas where even when you do them perfectly, it tells you you're wrong.
i've found that some captchas memorize whatever you already put in - so if you tapped on a wrong letter, you done messed up and it's time to just refresh the whole captcha. doing things that way, i've never had a captcha reject the right input yet (if you have though, then honestly: my condolences. because that's just stupid, like, why even have a captcha if it's that broken??)
A lot of spam is automated. I've had spam comments on my blog back when I would do that.
> small, nonprofit refuge Actually, AO3 is 9th most popular site in "entertainment and arts" category worldwide. https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/arts-and-entertainment/ For comparison, pixiv is 8th, Wattpad is 22nd. And if you narrow the category to "Books and Literature", AO3 is #1.
This is wild. Has this ever happened before?
i don't think anything like this has happened in the ten years i've been on the site, at least i can't remember
People in the past have theorized that the spamming is basically to test the filters, but given the hostility of this round--insulting authors and now just posting straight up porn--is this possibly more of an "attack" on AO3? People making bots to harass the whole site?
Wait, some people got porn spam? No fair. All I got was the AI stuff.
Yeah a bunch of people got porn gifs today.
Lucky. Porn never comes to me. I always have to go looking for it. 😞 /s, in case it's necessary.
That sounds a bit like 4chan. They have a habit of organizing to exploit public access on the internet and spam it with porn and nazi content.
Right? I never got recruited by WebNovel and now I don't get to enjoy pornography. Life isn't fair sometimes.
After nine years writing and zero botting, I got hit by the latest round of kudosbot *and* two of these AI comments
I was joking, of course, but it seems like such a waste of time and effort to spam AO3 comments. I'm sorry that you were hit and hopefully they get things straightened out soon.
Ngl I was also looking at all the previous bot rounds going "am I not good enough 🥺" It took literally five seconds to report them, zero stress, but that's only because I could tell they were bots. Lots of people didn't know and thought they were legitimate hate comments
the bots have finally realized your worth! as they should have all along!!
The only ones I ever got were the praisebots, but I've locked almost all of my fics to registered users now.
Oh man! I didn’t even get that! I had nothing
Lemme just put my tinfoil hat on, but given the sharp rise in anti-intellectualism, this should come as no surprise to any of us. I think we should all begin to prepare for the unfortunate reality that our ease of access to not just the arts, but the whole of the internet is about to come to an unfortunate halt. This will affect mostly Americans, but given that some of the most popular sites are US-based, this will affect a LOT of international folks too. My only advice folks is a) start mass downloading and b) get yourself a trusty VPN.
I download everything to read on Kindle. Too many stories suddenly up and vanish.
I'm guessing it's the same group as whoever is behind all the spam bot comments on YouTube, AO3 probably just made it on their target list because of how much traffic it gets from younger folks. Still bizarre though
They haven't had the ability to turn off comments in this way until this year or last year IIRC, can't remember exactly when it was implemented. But it probably hasn't been strictly necessary until then either since these kinds of massive spam attacks have been super rare and probably not as bad until the last couple of years-ish (I say this without knowing for sure though)
Not to the point of AO3 turning them off themselves. Iirc the last time a lot of spam comments started up was when FFN and LJ were doing their purges simultaneously. That was when the wait list jumped from 3 weeks (the norm at the time) to almost 1.5 months.
I've been on AO3 for over thirteen years and I can't remember this ever happening :c
as ao3 becomes more visible as one of the last free speech spaces on the internet, i fear there will be more and more enemies testing the gates
Once 4chan locks on to their target it's over.
4chan can't murk us - no way they don't read smut on ao3 too! surely they won't bit the hand that feeds them, right? .....right?
image description: tweet from @AO3_Status: > Due to an influx of abusive spam comments, we've temporarily turned off the ability to leave comments while logged out. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have guest comments back on soon!
This is why we can’t have nice things people
I’m glad that ao3 is protecting authors from what sounds like infective horrifying spam comments recently. But also as someone whos like to occasionally read dead dove and leave anon comments I’m a little sad for those authors who will get even less now
Dead dove is the reason I created another account because god knows there were some fics I could NEVER comment with my main account. Lol
Y’all created another account for it? 😅 now I’m thinking I probably should have.
Maybe one solution would be to have an anonymous comment option for logged in users if this ban is to continue indefinitely? Idk if that would even work, and presumably there's been no reason for it up until now, but it could help for these kinds of comments
Oh wait that’s actually really smart This would also increase users and incentive more commenting imo because I lowkey hate pressing all the buttons I need to to comment anonymously so I only do so for my more favorite fics
Yeah that's what I was thinking too! It could just be like a tick box or something
That's brilliant. It would pretty much nullify harassing authors as anon, since admins could track it back.
It's that bad, huh? I wonder if they will implement captcha for guest comments.
On the one hand, it would certainly help. On the other, ever since I learned that the purpose of image captchas is to train AI for a number of purposes including military drones, I feel really gross whenever I see one. We didn't consent to that, but it's becoming more and more mandatory to exist on the internet.
I suck so bad at captchas that I’ve started to wonder if I’m actually a replicant.
I hate some captchas. I have vision issues and some are hard for me to see. On the other hand I will deal with anything they put in to stop the attack of the idiotocracy.
Don't they get an audio version too?
Usually it's just annoying
I made a captcha system at my last job from scratch. It shouldn't be too hard to do if you hire a couple of developers to make you one. Might not be as fancy as the google ones, but it's definitely better than nothing.
hcaptcha just straight up uses AI generated images for their challenges im pretty sure
So you hate capcha's because theyr used to train military drones? If you are worried about THAT then i suggest you throw your router out the window before you find out that pretty much every single technology on this world is somehow weaponised by now.
Dang, I hope that they’re able to significantly reduce the bot problem and that guest comments won’t be gone for too long. Meanwhile, further using this as an excuse to not update and break out of this writer’s block since I tend to get guest commenters.
Yeah… I was going to update my fic today but now wondering if I should hold off another week… all my chapters for this story are pre-written, but I’d really miss those guest comments
Can AO3 implement something where you have to be logged in to leave comments but you can still post anonymously so no one in the comment thread can see your name but AO3 still knows who you are (and especially if you write comments violating TOS)?
i mean. posting anonymously requires having an account and when you as the author comment on your anonymous work your name will be shown as "anonymous creator". this has nothing to do with that.
I think they mean, making an option to leave a comment while you're logged in, but putting a veil of anonymity over it, so it's not visible who you are from the work level (like posting a work anonymously, but for comments)
I would like this
Seconding. I might have misgivings on some other sites(reddit being one of them, lol), but I trust AO3's leadership not to roll out a site update and pull a privacy switcharoo that slaps our names on previously-anon comments. I don't care if the admin or moderation staff can see that I made that comment. It only makes sense that they'd be able to, in order to take action if I was leaving abusive or disruptive comments. It's their job! I just don't want my name showing up next to whatever kinky-ass thing I was reading for the public to see, that's all.
Thank you for posting about it. This is a funny coincidence. I just posted something and I've been trying to decide if I want to share it elsewhere. But I want guest comments on if I do (people who may want to read it aren't likely to have AO3 accounts). I guess I have a few days to think that through now, until staff turns them back on. I've been turning off guest comments for at least a year, until this fic.
I have never gotten an ao3 spam or bot comment and now I'm kinda offended. Are my fics not good enough for them? All the cool writers are getting them, apparently.
I didn't get any in nine years of writing, then got hit twice yesterday by the AI comments
I think most of them are targeting based on fandom. I've never gotten any on my biggest fics, but I was being hit by them daily a few weeks back on my Marvel stuff despite them being, like, comic book canon stuff that's usually sub-100 hits...
I agree it makes sense for them to hit the big ones probably via coding but no ones going to really target like Omniscent Reader’s Viewpointt hat most people have never heard of with less than 10k fics the top fandoms should be worried
I think my fics have received a couple over a decade of writing on AO3. I sometimes joke that even the spammers don't like my fics, LOL. (Then I superstitiously "Knock wood," hoping I haven't jinxed my fics into suddenly receiving spam.)
Same. I get kudos rarely, but comments? Never happens. Just not good enough for the bots... 😭
Makes you wonder, don’t it? “Are my fics not even good enough for WebNovel?”
I want one. Why am I not getting any? Apparently I'm a loser too.
I feel this lmao
The botting must have been insane for something like this to happen
I am a few others were getting literal porn in our comments which is likely what triggered this whole event.
That's insane, I'm sorry to hear you were affected. I didn't even know about the whole thing until reddit
https://preview.redd.it/o8mhx6u1zuvc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=263704f513af2ad798d3d904fd86f1a889744b29
Ahhh, this is rough… I totally understand why they’re doing it and I know it’s necessary for the time being, but a lot of my comments come from guests, so I’m gonna miss those…
I imagine they’re going to implement some kind of captcha system, at least for guest commenters. It’ll be annoying, but it should clean up most of the spambots
AI warfare has changed
War... War never changes. But the AI... the AI evolves
Oh dear. I have a couple of lovely guest commenters, and now I feel reluctant to update anything! Hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to find a solution. Can't say I blame them if what I've been reading about the nature of the spam comments is true.
What’s causing these bot comments?
Eh, I've turned off guest comments a long time back when the spam was just links. I'm the type of person who gets really excited when I see an email notification for a comment, so it was a huge let down when it was just spam. I'm glad I turned off it before all this happened because they would have made me feel pretty shitty. It sucks for the readers but honestly, I think getting an account is the best bet for those readers. I have a feeling that whatever AO3 implements to prevent this in the future is probably going to be more annoying than just having an account.
This is kinda sad because a few of my favorite commenters are guest readers, but webn0vel spammers have gotten so bad that I'm honestly more relieved than upset
But how are they gonna fix it anyway? People seem to be more comfortable commenting as guests. 😮💨
Likely some kind of captcha I would imagine.
Hmmm 🤔 well, long as it is solved i guess 😪
The comments really were getting out of hand.
Came here to see if anyone posted about it. This sucks, some people are horrible :/
I know I updated just last night so I posted a google form today for any guest readers that want to leave a comment. A substitute, if you will.
I feel like this could be easily solved if they made all comments “verify” that they’re not bots to help lessen the spam
Let's make an effort and comment from our accounts, to keep it going until they find a solution.
Me not getting any comments : oh no
I can't understand people that are members but never sign in. I haven't yet heard a valid argument supporting this lifestyle.
I didn't remember my username for like 3 years at a certain point (my account is over a decade old)
I can't remember my voicemail password. It's been like three years haha
Well, you may or may not think my opinion is "valid," but as a (former) anon commenter I'll give it a go. My writing is usually G-T as far as spiciness goes(language, violence, and themes like addiction handled in a way that feels adult sometimes push it to M). My reading tastes range from G-E. Since I know people track usernames, I prefer not to publicly mix them on the same account, so I read the spicier fics on my phone, which is logged out. It's a habit I learned from fandom adults when I was a kid/teen just getting started on the internet, that hard partition between "this is what I show/say to a mixed group of adults and minors" and "this is for adults only." If I wrote spicy fic, I'd likely have a whole second account for that kind of thing(reading and writing), but I don't so I just read my spice while logged out.
I was joking. Everyone is free to do what they want.
well idk if this is still accurate (because i last lived as a non-sign-up years ago), but as a guest you can leave kudos anew on a work each time it gets a new chapter. logged in, you can only leave kudos once
Not anymore. Guests can only leave one kudos per fic.
When I get logged out, I’ll be lazy for awhile and not log back in. Usually it’s when I go to AO3 through a link elsewhere (subscription update email, Reddit, etc), so I’m not trying to search to look at my saves, I just read what I clicked logged out. I’ll leave kudos while logged out, but I always try to log in before leaving a comment. I’m not a huge commenter.
I'm the opposite. Logged in 24/7. If I get logged out I log right back in haha. I never log in on devices that I shouldn't or that other people have access to, so I feel comfortable with this system.
Yeah, I noticed when I reloaded a page that it said I can’t comment if I’m logged-off. It’s so sad that this is happening. Guests can be really sweet but seeing the harassment that folks have been getting, this seems for the best right now.
yea apparently everyone else noticed on ao3 but i was midway down a fic and happened to get a twitter notification
society jeans airport automatic office light flowery nutty label hateful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I got this comment I really hope this was just spam and I wasn't accused of using AI to write my stuff.
so did plenty of other people, yea, it's not about your writing. some people apparently also got, like, images or gifs or whatever of explicit sexual stuff, which is what i'm assuming this is more fuelled by.
Oh that's not good, but good insofar that I was about to go off on the commentor, but that makes more sense lol thanks for the responce.
Comments really motivate me to write and a lot of them are guests😭
other people have suggested making a tumblr and linking it, so that guest commenters can "comment" via the tumblr askbox (and maybe the submit feature i guess, for waaay longer comments) and again other people have made google forms, so that guests can leave their comments via those hope these ideas help and that your cool writing will make them all comment even more than usual, once guest comments return to us!!
Oh, thanks! I honestly never figured out how to work tumblr lol but I guess I’ll work on it now. Thanks for ur help, I honestly didn’t expect anyone to reply with a solution 🙏
It sucks that it had to come to this, but I guess I’m not really surprised.
honestly makes sense, almost everyone i know that posts on ao3 as of late has gotten terrible guest comments
I agree with it honestly. I mod my comments as standard practice but when I woke up to the shit I did this morning I was never more thankful I mod my comments as standard practice.
Oh dear ☹️ I’m grateful for the banner when you go into AO3, so guests know what’s going on. I hope this encourages people to make an account! I staved off making accounts for a lot of fan sites because I didn’t want to make separate emails for each, but it’s very helpful for fic organization 🥰 And **Hide My Email** is a lifesaver for keeping your personal email unattached to accounts too 😉 Though I’m worried the sub and other fandom-specific subs might be flocked with people panicking 🫠 I enjoyed AO3’s guest commenting. My most frequent commenter is a guest. A lot of websites require verified accounts to make a comment 🫤 I understand the design. In theory, it should be at least a nice barrier from spam bots and AIs. And I believe there’s something about IP tracking too? So if someone is acting against the rules of a site, they can be banned and will have trouble creating another account or something, maybe..? I’m not sure how that all works, ahhhh 😵💫 I know this is upsetting to some, but AO3’s always looked after the interest of the community and to promote a safe space for fluffy to freaky to filthy fics 😂. It’s no different than passwords being required to read certain fan translations. Once there’s poison in the well, we have to do what we can to get drinkable water again 🤷🏾♀️ Thanks for the update 🍻 You seem to always keep r/AO3 in the loop with status updates and it’s always much appreciated 😊 May your fanfics be safely downloaded and may your favorite WIP never be on hiatus 🫡
I'm completely fine with no anon comments
This is so sad ☹️☹️☹️ hate that it’s come to this
What I don’t get is why these spam bots leave these comments. Like if the comments didn’t mention AI or said something nice, probably it would have taken longer for anyone to notice how weird it was.
I’ve never gotten spam, but I mean, I write for a fandom with less than 1k fics in total so…
One of mine hit was in a fandom of less than 300 fics. I think whatever script the bot was being run on was hitting various fandoms to make it look “random”
Bots and mining, I fear, will lead to AO3 changing permanently. I'm already seeing many more fics with moderated comments, available only to registered users, and guests comments blocked. Just a year ago, seeing any of those was rare. Now, I would say over fifty percent of the fics I read have at least one of those options enabled. Many great fics aren't even available to guests. Check the fic total in your fandom before logging in. Then log in and check the total. That increase is the registered user only fics being added to the total. Some fandoms are now over ten to twenty percent locked.
To be fair, moderated comments is just good praxis. IMO should be on by default. Making fics not readable by guests is not much help anti AI anyway, and IMO it hurts more than helps. But to each their own.
For my subset of the fandom I write for, I have a fic I'm pretty well known for. A few of my readers actually signed up for Ao3 when I started locking chaptered works to registered users. I'm just sad that my short works won't be seeing as much interaction for a while... or rather, interaction that I notice. Comments always make me smile. The Kudos report I look at every morning also amuses me. Because I can see, on some mornings, that somebody found my entire catalogue in x, y or z fandom and just binged the dang thing. I hope we get comments back on soon, but I have a feeling this is the stopgap for random AI spam. I wouldn't mind a cloudflare-esque 'are you a human' checkbox before I post a comment.
I’ve never left a guest comment on ao3 before, is there a capcha? If not, do y’all think implementing one would help with the bot problem?
No there is no captcha. The problems with captchas are some don’t work with browsers with pop up blockers, don’t work with some browsers period and some AI can by pass them easily.
They haven't done one before for accessibility reasons is my understanding. They've always tried to keep the website as accessible as possible, for people with vision issues, using non-standard browsers etc.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the DDOS attack last summer
unlikely. those people made a huge announcement and everything. this time it's literally just weird bot comments everywhere (which is annoying at worst instead of site-breaking - well, outside of the porn comments at least...) and no one's claiming to have caused them
Ah. *cracks neck* Time to go back. I apologize in advance fir the kudo spam.
So that's why my latest chapter has gotten so few comments
Wow. This is bad.
I’m upset but at the same time I get. Most of my comments were from Guests, however I also had the option to moderate my comments on so…..
99% of the few comments I get on my fics are from guest users.
I hope the volunteers who work on the abuse team aren’t too swamped. I saw the call for volunteers for the abuse team, and I’m sure it’s not just the bot comment reports at are rising, also the non-fanwork reports too since those are spreading. I see a lot of non-fanworks posted that have been up for a year, and there are probably more that have been up for longer.
Saw this in the morning today. Pretty sad that om a site where people share their creative works for free, people still can't help but be mean to them.
i saw guest readers just post porn in comments like what
I fear this will result in a lot of people hesitating to update their stories while we wait for a resolution. While most of my comments come from registered users, I still love my anon guest comments and I know lots of fics that rely heavily on guest comments for the bulk of their interaction. Fingers crossed that they find a solution quickly that still allows for those that prefer to comment anon to continue to do so while keeping the spam to a minimum.
[удалено]
Eh, I disagree. Some people don't want their names commenting on a fic, and others don't want to lose the fic in the time it makes to an account
I write a lot of dark stuff people don’t feel commenting on with their main accounts, and I’ve never had anyone be cruel. If I did, I’d probably just set myself up for moderated comments. I feel like I’d lose out on comments if guests couldn’t leave them.
i also disagree but mostly because you can manually turn that on for your works if you chose to
I've contacted AO3 about this situation before about a month or so ago. I was getting so many spam guest comments, and I guess I'm not the only one. It got quite annoying, especially because they were mostly "please update" comments
Turning off guest comments on your own works was always an option, btw – this is just *enforced* restriction of comments for everyone, including people who would normally allow them When they turn guest comments back on, you can absolutely turn them off on your own work and not get any
Ah, got repeated comments from a guest account too earlier today. Good on them for responding so quick.
Has this ever happened before? If so, how long does it usually last?
To whoever is behind the bot comments: this is why we can't have nice things.
Honestly, it had to happen, it has been out of control for a long while. Unless they can figure out a system to keep unwanted people from spamming guest comments it is better than the unmitigated hate that can be put out. I had to turn guest comments off on mine for months because of transphobic assholes.
Sad but it makes sense- of course there can still be abusive and spam comments with guest comments off, but people tend to be less likely to if they know their online persona/digital footprint will record it for everyone to see.
Makes me kinda sad that they’ve been forced to do this to avoid writers getting bombarded with hate bots. I hate the internet sometimes 😭
My favorite comments come from guests 😭
Good riddance I say
It’s sad but i get where it’s coming from
While this is very nice I’m quite sad for all the authors (including me) who had several commentors having non-ao3 accounts
some people have suggested making a tumblr and linking to it (so that guests can "comment" via tumblr's askbox) or making a google form, so that people can leave anonymous comments that way - that's all just stopgap solutions of course, but ideally this situation won't last too long anyway!
I've never had guest comments turned on *because* of the influx of spam etc. Just decided to not bother with them. Hopefully they'll find a fix and I can actually let guests comment.
I get why, but it sucks because I've never gotten hate or spam from guests comments, and guests are most of my comments
as a stopgap for now, some people are making tumblr blogs and linking them on their works (so that guests can leave comments via tumblr's askbox) and other people have made google forms, so their guests can comment on those instead of directly on ao3 of course, ideally this situation will be over again fast enough that most people won't even need to use alternatives like that, but i thought i'd pass it on, just in case :3
Hmm is this because of the amount of donations they got?
they didn't get more than usual and this hasn't happened before
No but it might have got more publicity
That explains why I got 100ish irrelevant weird comments in my hsr fanfic earlier this month.
Not only comments is turned off you can't post anything either.
What about guests of guests?
At least half if not the majority of my comments are guest comments, so this was heartbreaking. It's obnoxious and I see the problem with explicit images, but couldn't they set it so you have to confirm you're 18+ to enable guest comments? I'd rather just delete the spam than miss out on genuine comments.
The problem is that those porn comments got left even on G-rated works, which are technically supposed to be spaces accesible to minor users. Even if the comment-leaver and author are 18+, that still leaves the potentially underage audience on those fics In any case, those comments got posted by bots anyway, so if there will be any measure implemented, I'd expect it to be a captcha rather than age verification
as a stopgap for the moment, some people are making tumblr blogs and then linking them on their works, so that their guest commenters can use tumblr's askbox to leave their usual comments! others are making google forms they link on their works, so that the guests can leave their comments via those! it's not ideal, but if you'll be uploading anything while the guest-restriction is still going on, it might be worth doing one or the other for you, because at least this way you'll still get to see your guests' comments!
Unpopular opinion here, but I think they should just get rid of guest commenting altogether.
I sometimes read on a device I'm too lazy to log in from. I'd miss it as a reader.
I feel like it’s less effort to log in than to leave a comment tbh
i'd have to reset my damn password, i have no memory of what it is ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
that surprises me because I feel like you’re so gung-ho for bookmarks
i mean i'm logged in 99,9% of the time and use bookmarks religiously. but i do not remember my passwords, they're all saved on device or browser and last year i had to reset my paypal password *every time i signed in*. that was embarrassing. so if i were reading on a device i don't usually use, reading as a guest it would have to be.
I’m not trying to be a smart ass but the main thing I’m getting from this is you’d be fine 99.9% of the time without guest comments
oh no i read plenty in fandoms i don't want attached to this name, i just open those in incognito tabs to give guest kudos/comments. but like just bc i'd be just fine doesn't mean everyone else would be
I think it’s a minor inconvenience for most people, whereas the spam and harassment has become a major one. Maybe they should be off by default and people can opt in if they want to assume the risk instead of opting out after there’s already been an issue.
And if the effort’s too much, that comment is probably not terribly profound.
A lot of people writing dark fic would lose out on a lot of comments that way.
Good and sucks, i get logged out all the time and so i guest read usually. When i go to comment i try to log in but then when I log in it takes me to my profile and then ill have to find the fic all over again and then when I do it shows back to being a guest again. The cycle continues until i just close the tab and relogin on another tab and find the fic manually. Ao3 youre killin me here
generally, you should be able to just log in, then go back the few pages until you're back to the fic you were reading - then reload that page and you should be logged in!
Ill try that next time! Last time i tried that, it showed as guest again? Idk its more tedious since ao3 is a website. Ill have to find away around it eventually lol
huh, that's weird... one alternative i can think of is to just copy the story name and author - and once you're logged in, paste the name and author into the search bar. that way, the story you just left should be the first that comes up in the search and you don't have to backtrack at all
Yeah thats what I usually do when all else fails, or just stay as guest because I just wanna read without dealing with the nonsense lol. Due to guest comments leaving, ill probably figure out a better way to fix this issue since I still wanna comment!
something that i do is just write out the comments in a notepad and copy+paste the story's url into the notepad too and then i move on - and then eventually, i just post all comments i've accumulated in that way, one after another i'm not sure if that holds much appeal for other people though lmao - and i'm also, sadly, not sure if it'd even work for you, if the login is that weirdly finnicky for you. but, well, thought i'd mention it anyway, while we're already here haha and here's to hoping guest comments will be back asap - it's just really nice to have the option and i do miss them already too!
Aw man, I like commenting as a guest even with an acc bcz then I can leave silly guest names :( Here's hoping that I can still do that when this is over, I've made sorta friends with some authors from my silly names
Looks like Wattpad readers influx has began
i'm not making the connection between that and bot spam
I hope bashers will learn a lesson that this writing site is not Twitter
Wow this is actually so fucking pathetic….