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Spam comments on AO3

Bots posting scam or harassing comments

AO3 has seen a rise in spam comments from bots, often posted as guests. They try to get you to reply, contact them off the site, click links or run code.

Is Archive of Our Own down right now? Partial outage: 53 problem reports in the last hour. Many people are having trouble, so this problem may come from Archive of Our Own's side: waiting can be enough.

Fix it

How to fix it

Don't reply, click links or run any code from the comment.
For a guest comment, open it on your work and click the Spam button.
For a registered account, click Thread on the comment, then Policy Questions & Abuse Reports, and report it as a spambot.
To cut down on guest spam, turn off anonymous comments or limit the work to registered users.

From Archive of Our Own's help pages: transformativeworks.org, in our words. Checked on 5 November 2026. If the steps do not help, Archive of Our Own's own support is the next stop.

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Spam comments on AO3

How to fix it

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