The spambot problem at Fanfiction.Net

I’ve noticed a new spam trend on FFN recently. You upload a story or update a chapter, and in less than an hour you can end up with up to five new favorites, follows, or reviews.

At first, you think, "Cool—new follows and faves, maybe even a review? Awesome." Then you check your email alerts and find something like:

I'm an artist. Your story is awesome! Hire me to create art for it—contact me on Discord or Instagram!

Or something along these lines:

As you can imagine, this is incredibly dumb. These spambots are clearly running an art scam, hoping someone naive falls for it.

It’s an obvious phishing attempt.

I’ve been part of the fanfiction community since 1997. I was on the FFML, joined FFN in 2001, and I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go.

This spambot trend?

It’s probably the most annoying one yet—automated, relentless, and especially discouraging for new authors just starting out on FFN.

Thankfully, places like AO3 and Wattpad seem more resistant to this kind of spam. Still, this is the sort of thing that leaves a bad taste and ultimately hurts FFN’s reputation even more.

At least the FFN moderators seem to be purging spambot accounts every week or so.

Oh well. Hopefully this fad burns itself out soon.