More Bots More Problems
A quick note about Chat etiquette and phishing vigilance
Greetings, Fictionistas!
We’re here to address an issue our site has been having with a very tenacious robot subscriber who has made a programmed habit of subscribing to Fictionistas every single day at the same time under the same name with a different user handle and, we assume, email address. A quick view of the user’s profile shows they produce zero content of their own and are ONLY subscribed to Fictionistas. (LUCKY US!) And it seems their only order of business is to drop a series of GoFundMe links along with some empathy-inducing images in our community Chat. A Chat which our guidelines clearly state is no place for “irrelevant or spammy posts.” “Irrelevant” meaning not pertaining to fiction or fiction writing. And “spammy” meaning cash grabs or funding appeals.
PLEASE KNOW THAT FICTIONISTAS WOULD NEVER ASK OUR SUBSCRIBERS TO FUND ANYTHING!!! WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TIER. IF YOU RECEIVE ANY KIND OF MESSAGE UNDER OUR PUBLICATION BANNER (OR UNDER THE NAME OF ANY OF OUR ADMINS) THAT ASKS FOR MONEY OR REQUESTS ANY ACTION THAT LURKS OUTSIDE THE CONTENT REALM OF WHAT THIS COMMUNITY IS ABOUT, IT IS A SCAM!!!
PLEASE STAY VIGILANT and use the REPORT function to notify us of any suspicious activity. And know that we have been routinely BLOCKING and REPORTING this “user” to Substack on your behalf for several weeks already.
In light of this issue becoming a daily problem for Admins and Chat users, we will—sadly and hopefully only temporarily-be disabling the Chat.
In order to keep a line open for our subscribers to share their best work and the work of others in our community, we will be starting a bi-monthly “shout out” thread, which will have it’s own set of submission guidelines to ensure our fiction friendly forum stays fiction friendly!
You can expect the first thread on October 1st!
In the meantime, go write something amazing.
We already can’t wait to read it!
Sincerely,
The Team of Humans behind Fictionistas 🧡
I'm going to restack this.
I'm sorry this is happening to you.