Kudos Bot

Related terms:	AO3, AO3 Comment Bots, AI Generated Content
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Kudos bots are a form of bot activity that became prevalent on Archive of our Own in 2021. Users began to notice that works of theirs were receiving uncommonly large numbers of guest kudos left on them in a short period of time, and this intensified over a number of weeks.

There were various suggestions as to what the kudos bots were — ranging from malfunctioning bots used for other purposes through to mischief — but it seems that no definitive cause was identified. While there have been reports of suspected kudos bots in 2023 and 2024, the prevalence (or at least the reports of their prevalence) seemed to reduce over time. Some of this may have been due to an increase in users locking their work to those with AO3 accounts, which prevented whatever the kudos bot was from interacting with their work. AO3 comment bots also began to emerge after the kudos bot, which pushed more people to lock their works.

Overview of Events

In the first week of October 2021, a number of users reported on platforms like Reddit and Tumblr that they had seen an uncommonly large amount of kudos being left by guest accounts on their fanworks on AO3. Some of these works were in very small or niche fandoms, making it incredibly unlikely that the influx was due to someone sharing the link to work on a popular Discord channel, for example. Additionally, some works were hit with 100+ kudos near simultaneously, leading to some works having more kudos than they had hits.

[RotationalAnomaly]
I don't know if anyone else is experiencing this but me and a couple of other people in a community are experiencing a mass amount of fake kudos being put onto our fics. For me, both of my fics gained over 300 kudos within 24 hours. Both of these fics have not been updated since June/August since one of them is complete and the other is taking a while. This means that these two fics are really far down in the home page and them earning this sheer amount of kudos in such little time is unrealistic. These are all guest kudos, and the hits don't seem to be going up with them either. ​

We briefly hypothesized that it may be a bot attack but I feel the hits would still be going up in that case. I don't know what's happening, and I want to know if anyone else is experiencing this and if it will be fixed, considering I don't like all of these illegitimate kudos being shown on my fics.

[Kezzatehfezza]

I had a similar thing happen but turns out the show had aired for the first time in a bunch on countries a long time after everywhere else got it first and it was all new fans.

[zuppi_zup]

No, it's clearly something else. Like has been said, there's a huge disconnect between hits and kudos. Fics amassing 10 times the kudos to hits. And it isn't affecting all fics, as one would expect with a sudden influx of new consumers. We are pretty deep in hiatus as well. This surge in kudos (but not hits) is most unusual.

Within a few days, more AO3 authors were reporting the same massive influx of kudos on some works and volunteers at AO3 were aware of it, though the options for how to resolve it seemed likely to be limited.

[cjrecordvt]
You're muuuuuch more than the second person we've had it happen to. We've flagged it for our coders to look at, but unless there's something exceedingly obvious, there's very likely not much we can do, because we can't tell "real" kudos from "fake".

[FariardAO3]

Thanks for replying. At the moment, my fic has 28 user kudos and 92 guest kudos, half of which from yesterday's glitch This looks really awkward. I poured blood into this fic, and I know that many people don't really mind stats (I don't either), but many do, and I'm concerned that now every reader clicking on my fic will become wary about my kudos count, or even suspect me of being dishonest. It's disheartening. I really hope that you'll find that something exceedingly obvious to help me (us)

One of the early recommendations, which was the most effective throughout, from AO3 and other users was to lock all works to registered users only. Throughout the rest of 2021 and into 2022, the kudos bot remained prevalent. Like the many comment bots which would come after, there didn't seem to be a specific pattern to which works would get hit. Some users reported that all of their works were hit, others that all their works in one fandom were hit but no other fandoms, and some users had only a single work be hit. Meanwhile other AO3 users never had the kudos bot hit any of their works.

Some AO3 users soon began to discuss and theorise what exactly the kudos bot was.

At the same time, other users began to discuss whether the posting of links to fanworks on different platforms might be what was directing the bot to specific works. r/AO3 had regular rec threads and fic exchanges where fics would be directly linked, for example, and there were some concerns that this might be contributing to the problem.

[Nock_and_Bolt]
I’ve been on AO3 for several years now, never had anything weird going on with my kudos. And theeeennnn I join Reddit, participate in some fic exchanges, and the other day I got 150 guest kudos on a story that maybe gets one kudos every other week when people find it, and today got 57 guest kudos on a story that hasn’t gotten any interaction since I posted it because it’s a dark dramatic piece on a lesser known character in a mid/small sized fandom.

Both of the fics hit were (surprise surprise) fics I linked on Reddit (and the guest kudos influx for the second story happened a day or two after posting it on Reddit when it’s been written and up on AO3 for months). I know correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but this is looking mighty suspicious.

I enjoy sharing my fics with others, and Reddit had seemed like a cool way to discuss fanfic with others and just engage in that community in a new way on a different platform, but I gotta say this is making me kind of wary of continuing to do so. I don’t really want to have to keep track of what kudos are “real” and what aren’t, but it also seems ridiculous to let some mysterious bot-that-might-not-be-a-bot interfere with my enjoyment of fandom stuff. 😂🤪

Idk. What would you guys do/recommend? Why do you continue to share fics on Reddit if you do, or do you not bother?

[Momo_Likes]

There is definitely a correlation because people have said it after the past maybe 3-5 fic exchanges. If you are going to participate, the answer is to lock your fic so that only logged in reviewers will be able to view it in the day or two after participating. I'd personally rather do that and still participate in the review exchanges. The fun I have from interacting with other writers and their work and getting actual reviews feels more worth it than the few handful of natural guest kudos I'm going to miss out on by restricting it to only registered users.

Impact on fan spaces and fan commentary

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

The kudos bot prompted various discussions on platforms like Reddit and Tumblr about what exactly kudos meant to people.