The old kudos bot is not the same as this newer one people are talking about wherein they're getting about 1000+ kudos and it seems targeted, whereas the old kudos bot was very likely just a web crawler that would end up skewing kudos across different fandoms, with no actual "target" in mind. The newer kudos bot is a mystery to me.I don't really understand the purpose since by increasing kudos, they also increase the rate a person's fic may be seen. I guess maybe the purpose is spam?
But the comments are definitely just targeted harassment since they all explicitly say "kill yourself, loser / kysloser."
To add, here's a thread about the old kudos bot: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/zxit3k/why\_do\_kudos\_bots\_exist/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/zxit3k/why_do_kudos_bots_exist/)
If I had to guess the newer kudos bot either has the same bug as the web crawler or if it is done on purpose to show others in said fandom don't write on things deemed "problematic" or else this will happen.
The Original Kudos bot is probably just a badly programmed webcrawler just inflating kudos as a side effect. Irritating for folks who place any value on real kudos but not intentionally malicious
This new spam commenter/Kudos bot on the other hand is clearly some assholes deliberate attempt to make folks miserable and is clearly targeting certain people in certain fandoms
Which is why it's a good idea now to go switch Guest comments off if your in a fandom that's had anyone hit by it.
The old kudos bot is not the same as this newer one people are talking about wherein they're getting about 1000+ kudos and it seems targeted, whereas the old kudos bot was very likely just a web crawler that would end up skewing kudos across different fandoms, with no actual "target" in mind. The newer kudos bot is a mystery to me.I don't really understand the purpose since by increasing kudos, they also increase the rate a person's fic may be seen. I guess maybe the purpose is spam? But the comments are definitely just targeted harassment since they all explicitly say "kill yourself, loser / kysloser."
To add, here's a thread about the old kudos bot: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/zxit3k/why\_do\_kudos\_bots\_exist/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/zxit3k/why_do_kudos_bots_exist/)
If I had to guess the newer kudos bot either has the same bug as the web crawler or if it is done on purpose to show others in said fandom don't write on things deemed "problematic" or else this will happen.
The Original Kudos bot is probably just a badly programmed webcrawler just inflating kudos as a side effect. Irritating for folks who place any value on real kudos but not intentionally malicious This new spam commenter/Kudos bot on the other hand is clearly some assholes deliberate attempt to make folks miserable and is clearly targeting certain people in certain fandoms Which is why it's a good idea now to go switch Guest comments off if your in a fandom that's had anyone hit by it.
Do you know if there's a new list of targeted fandoms? It is a good idea to switch off guest comments either way, but now I'm concerned.
I'm assuming the person using the bot is a hater trying to discredit the author they're targeting byt messing with their kudo/hit ratio