Pretty well over it

[cornerofmadness]

I honestly don't know what to replace with Twitter with. I didn't hit the idiotic 600 tweet limit but let's face it, it's on its way out fast. Bluesky you need an invite and good luck with that apparently. Both it and Mastodon you have the decentralized system which I'm not sure I like. So if I'm over here but my friends go over there can I see them? Can I talk to them? I feel like I'm in a box. I could probably get an invite to Mastodon if I need it. I didn't like most of the servers themes and the one I DID like wanted you to contribute to a patreon (which I get it, the mods are doing this free) but eh. SUggestions?

Same with AO3. Yes I think they need to do much better than they are but do I think squidgeworld will do better? On the surface, no not really. I almost made an account (and probably will eventually) but their thing seems to be 'be careful of what you put in the bio' which I read as if you put you're anything but a straight cis white Christian person in your bio, you're going to be a target which is likely true. Will any of them be able to deal with the trolls? Doubtful (especially in light to the Supreme Court decisions this week) And these are global platforms so whose rules do we follow? I'm assuming the host country. This is taking me back to when FFN made the decision to disallow explicit stories because of the legal woes. All I know is I wouldn't want to be in charge of these things.

I'm also 100% over my garden. It took an hour to remove trees from half of it. This isn't more than 4 X10. I was bleeding. There's now poison ivy in it. I'm THIS close to digging up my lilies this year and having it all taking back to bare earth.

I didn't get anything cleaned. I am still torn about going home. Sigh. They say it's okay. Dad was the one to suggest waiting til Thursday. But I can't escape feeling like people will be disappointed. Maybe

I guess I have a head filled with weasels right now (maybe it's better I don't find reliable social media)

Suddenly I'm getting this lovely reviews of my Prodigal Son stories. Two of them I thought nothing of it as they are emotional stories but then they started appearing on one that is just the precusor to smut. That started my head. This isn't real. You're being mocked. WHY? Actually why brain but also why would anyone do that. On the other hand, those accounts aren't clickable to go see who they are.... (also how the heck do you lock down as story on AO3? I thought I had but nope). The stories in question

Path Out of Isolation lady_inverse

The Changing of Shapes the_lady_lillie

Scotch and Toys DragonsIre & cakie_nsfw

it's so odd.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

A lot of people are getting bot generated reviews on AO3 that have nothing to do with the stories, They use actual account names but they aren't clickable, and the people who own the accounts write in completely different fandoms, often not even in English, so that's a pretty reliable way to figure out if it's a real review or not. That and the way the gush over everything, even if there's no such thing in the story.

[cornerofmadness]

that is so weird. truly. I do need to start making it registered users again but not sure it would help in this case. It boggles the mind as to what anyone gets out of this. Like I said, with the emotional stories I didn't think much of it until I got that on the smut and I'm like yeah no. Sigh.

[badly_knitted]

Honestly, I don't think going registered users only would make any difference since it's using the account names for genuine users. I feel quite disheartened now when I get a new review on AO3, because nine times out of ten it's one of these fake comments.

[cornerofmadness]

that does make it worse, doesn't it? Guess I need to see if it's a real link before responding

[badly_knitted]

I think that's probably the only way. If it mentions characters or things specific to the fic then it's probably real, but anything that doesn't is worth checking.

[cornerofmadness]

Today I got one aiming for marvel (which it was) so it's getting that hard to tell. Sigh. I don't really want to lock it down 100% because I get more guest kudos than anything but dang it

[badly_knitted]

Same here. All we can do is mark the definitely bot reviews as spam and hope AO3 can deal with the problem somehow.

[cornerofmadness]

pretty much

[shanachie_quill]

If you want I can find my directions to lock stuff down.

Those are bots. If the username isn't clickable, it's bots.

[cornerofmadness]

I would appreciate if you could

Yeah I f'ed up and didn't put them on registered users only. Sigh. I don't get why they're so gushy. I did report them for all the good that does

[shanachie_quill]

Ugh I can't find the directions. I'll look again during the week (if I remember).

I have no idea. But yeah I feel that.

[cornerofmadness]

no worries, someone else told me, immediately hated it and changed it back

[shanachie_quill]

Glad you figured it out, sorry it didn't work.

[the_siobhan]

I got a mastodon account. I can easily see people who are on different instances, but I don't seem to be able to search for people by their user name unless I know what instance they are on.

I'm the_siobhan@tech.lgbt. I use it about as much as I use twitter - which is to say not very much.

[cornerofmadness]

thanks, that's helpful to know. I appreciate it

[sanguinity]

I see people have already pointed out that some of those are bots -- your instinct was right that they were weird. Tumblr has more info about how to ID them.

I've also seen that AO3 is asking people to click "Spam" (on AO3, not in your email!) to help them ID and weed out these comments.

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks. I don't get it. I clicked them off as spam but I'm like what does anyone get out of these gushy ones. Better than scathing hate but I still don't get it.

[sanguinity]

From the post I linked: the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate.

In the last month or two, AO3 implemented some stuff that is supposed to stop AI from scraping stories for their training sets. Apparently this is an attempt by those story-scrapers to look more like a legit anonymous reader, and less like a bot scraping the archive.

[cornerofmadness]

that makes sense. that's what I was wondering which is why I was trying to lock my stories but failed to do it correctly Thanks

[countessofgranthamcora]

My friends and I are going to instagram, Tumblr and Discord to play

[cornerofmadness]

Yeah I don't care for tumblr much. I'm on insta which is okay but much much more difficult to communicate well. That depends a lot on your comfort level with putting photos out there.

My discord is in I can't verify it because my email is messed up limbo. Sigh (but I only do that with very close friends now as that was an old school level of toxic in the groups I was in at least)


eta - Ugh, this sounds way more critical and negative than I meant it. I'm under my actual name over on Insta

[snowynight]

For locking down AO3 stories, go to My Work-->Edit Works-->Click All button at the top->Click Edit button at the bottom. Then choose from the visibility & "Who can comment on these works " options-->click update all work button. This will override your current visibility and "Who can comment on these works " selection.

The first time I did this I forgot to click all and failed. I hope it's useful.

[cornerofmadness]

thanks so much. I tried that before and I must have missed a step. Trying it again