9 Comments
User's avatar
The Annihilated Truth's avatar

Thank you for the warning!

The Revolution Continues's avatar

I've noticed some unusual "likes" of two or three year old articles lately... I didn't think anything about it, but you could be right about the scraping AI bots. Don't know whether to be paranoid or flattered actually.

Michael Alan Dover, PhD's avatar

i have seen the same thing. Typically no info on the person and lots of restacks and likes but no actual posts I just block them.

Indie's avatar

You get restacks? That’s actually kinda nice but I am concerned about what’s happening here, and Substack management hasn’t addressed it yet to my knowledge

Michael Alan Dover, PhD's avatar

What I meant is that I have "beats" (they only show on web version). Updates to my beats do no produce emails, so it would take some doing to find them. Yet recently several "likes" on old beats, and your post made me curious. In one case, and yes it was on a piece on a book review, the poster no longer has an account, and in a second, the account exists but a skimpy "about" and all they seem to do is restack other people's posts.

Magic Girl's avatar

It also has a distinct pro-capitalist bent.

Crapp's avatar

Not much - old comments sometimes seem to be getting more likes, but, as my stuff is invisible on here actual, articles and the like, nothing. As normal!

Lloyd Miller's avatar

I too have noticed mounting "likes" to old post I made, almost all forwarding of other people's work. I saw no references to "books" in those doing the scraping, however.

Lloyd Miller's avatar

More likely, AI bots are cataloging "bad" ideas & misinformation and black listing writers and promoters.