Scam Bots on Fanfiction.net
I know many of you were expecting a new chapter of my fanfics on Fanfiction.net but unfortunately, I’m not even sure if I want to post any more chapters there and debating whether to remove them as well as move to A03 permanently.
I don’t know if any of you are aware of what’s going on, but there has been a rise in scam bots originating from Pakistan that started back in August 2024. So far, me and the writers have been affected by them. How? You ask. I’ll tell you why.
Whenever we post our fanfics, we normally get comments, faves, and reviews. Sometimes we would get the good, the bad, and the ugly. Naturally, if the comments/reviews were hostile, the obvious way is to not take it personally, just block/ignore them and go on with your day. Of course, not everyone is going to love/hate your fanfics and that’s okay. I know some people don’t like my fanfics, let alone crossovers and that is fine as it’s not their cup of tea. If they read it and still don’t like it, at least they gave it a chance and have a legitimate reason to hate it rather than just skim or not read it at all and make assumptions about it. I’m not going to cry about it if they did the latter, sure, I’ll be annoyed but I can just ignore it and move on.
But the problem with this site is that you cannot remove the registered user's reviews, only the guests. Most of the reviews I get are mostly those obnoxious scam bot accounts. I first got mine back in October 2024 and that’s when I later learned from the forum that I checked out both here and on Reddit that it’s a scam bot so what did I do? I just deleted their messages, blocked them, and moved on. I tried removing the review but only to learn that as I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t because it was a registered user, which I thought was stupid. You can delete the comments on A03 and other sites but here, you cannot.
So, after that, I ended up getting another one, which I repeated the same thing. Then I got another, and another, and another. Pretty soon, it became all the same, rinse and repeat. All of those follows/reviews were revealed to be those same damn scam bots. I also noticed that whenever I post a new chapter, it would attract those bots as if they were mosquitoes. Half a year has passed and so far, I’ve been getting mostly bots and only two legit reviews, minus one who was revealed to be an imposter (can’t delete that one either because he’s a registered user) and has nothing to do with the scam bots, thankfully.
What the scam bots would do is they would claim that they ‘read’ your story, and it ‘captivates’ them to make your fanfic into comic book/art/movie/etc. They would leave the link to their Instagram, Art Station, Twitter, and Discord to show us their ‘artwork’. Oh, but you need to ‘pay them’ to make fan art of your fanfics. The problem is that this site does not allow anyone to make profits from fanfics, so they were already breaking the rules there. Another issue is that they were using the ChatGPT and the artwork they ‘supposedly’ made was either stolen from another artist as well impersonating them and/or it was made AI-generated. Basically, you were paying them for stealing artwork as well as getting AI slop for $800 or more. They would rob your money as well as steal your credit card/PayPal info so if you get those same spammy messages, don’t buy it! Just block them using the ID number because if you block their usernames, they can get around the block by changing their usernames but if you block their ID numbers, they couldn’t get around it even if they changed the names. Remember, those ‘artists’ would never go to their clients to advertise their commissions, it’s us who go to them. If you want a commission, just browse around or ask a friend who knows they trust commission. As for me, I’m an artist and I can draw my stuff without feeling a need to commission others. The only ones I trust are my friends, not strangers.
Now some of you may wonder, how do I know those bot accounts were all operated by someone from Pakistan? Well, it’s thanks to one user from a forum who messaged them back to get some info and was able to find out where all of them came from the scam operation ring in Pakistan.
I joined the forum which is Writer’s Anonymous and there’s a topic which is called New Scam? (People with art station accounts asking for money to make fanart for you). Thanks to them, the users who were also being spammed by those bots have a huge list which is over 424 accounts, so me and the others were able to block them all but the problem? They would just make another account, and the sad part is that even though we reported them to the admins, nothing has been done. The admin, known as Xing Li, was nowhere to be found and according to the forum users, they said that he refused to hire anyone who doesn’t live locally (he lives in California) which is stupid since the area that he lives in was affected by the fires, leaving others homeless or forced to move somewhere else. What then? There are more reasons why you need to hire outside of his state instead of relying on one place. It was also on the Fanfiction.net Reddit section as well so if any of you were Reddit users, you probably already know what’s going on. The scammers are now aware that we made a forum and Reddit, so they are trying to backtrack saying that they’re not ‘scammers’ but thanks to this, we are no longer buying their bull. I subscribed to that forum just to keep an eye out for any more new accounts and post them there so we can block them.
The only way to get rid of the spammers and remove the reviews is if Xing Li gets his butt back online (if he survived the fires that is but we don’t even know if he’s dead or alive as we have no information and have no way of contacting him besides Twitter and his FF email) and does something about it. When he’ll be back? Who knows how long before he comes around and it could be a year or longer. I don’t want to wait that long and if he doesn’t come by at the end of 2025, I’ll have no choice but to remove my fanfics and delete this account. I really don’t want to as this was my first fanfic site that I found back in late 1999 and was reading a lot of Sonic SaTAM fanfics as well as G1 My Little Pony and Care Bears. I didn’t make the account till 2010 and posted my first Care Bears fanfic in 2013. I already posted the next chapter, but I posted in A03 rather than here because of those scam bots.
I created an A03 account in 2019 and the best part of that site is that you can control the reviews and comments as well as remove them if they are hostile. The site was also being targeted by the same scam bots but the A03 admins were quick to shut that down. I had to turn off the guest comments in order to avoid the scam bots as they would get around to avoid the block so if any of you were guests, I am sorry, but it had to be done. You can thank those bots for that. I will turn them back on someday but until then, they will remain closed. I’ve already closed my private messaging here until further notice.
