EXCLUSIVE: Are AI Bots Scraping Substack?
A Wave of Likes of Old Posts by Accounts That Seem Non-Human? Suspect. My Advice? Protect Your Content. Block These Bots. An Original Article by Indie
Book Review Accounts Liking Old Posts?
For Video Posts and Summary Lists of Content from other Platforms?
Back at the end of January, I started to notice a trend - here and there, I started seeing likes of old random Substack posts by accounts that were related to book reviews, or book lists. Most of these articles liked were either lists themselves, or video posts with links to content shown in the video within the body of the article.
In the beginning of February, I posted to Notes about this (which went nowhere, as usual per most of my Notes).
https://substack.com/@indiemediatoday/note/c-208649587?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=539iu
Are These Even Real Humans? What’s Happening Here?
I started to click on these suspect profiles and noticed that they had a common theme:
Not many subscribers
only subscribed to a handful of publications
no posts of their own
about 5 or 6 “restacks”
and a TON of Notes with links to posts liked, with seemingly no connection between them
Pump Up the Volume!
Another wave of them happening over the past couple of days. What is going on here? Is anyone else experiencing this?
Accounts no longer limited to books and wealth - how About “Essential Mastery,” or “Perfect Guidance”?
Ongoing List of Accounts I’ve Caught:
Staywithbooks
The Book Lesson
1WealthHealth
Wealth Life
New History Books
Book Therapy
Book Briefs
books poetry quotes
Book Weekly
Better World Books
Heardly_Daily Book Summaries
Booksforaspirants
Booktasters
Grailpeel (?)
Buzzfeed Books
Science Women
DanJovelin
Mindbro
Life Lessons
Essential Mastery
Perfect Guidance
The Book Lesson
Why Do I Think This is Happening?
I don’t know what the value of scraping this kind of content is, but clearly someone (or something) thinks it’s worthy of a “like” - is that a way to bookmark it? These accounts could theoretically just scrape the content and leave. Why leave the like? Never a restack, always just a like.
The only thing I can think of why anyone would do this is for nefarious purposes - because
there is an intent to republish the links, repackaged without giving credit somehow, and/or
to set up a copyright takedown claim against the original author at some point in the future, if they don’t like the messaging of content being spread.
https://substack.com/@indiemediatoday/note/c-214090883?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=539iu
Conclusion: What Should You Do About It Now?
My advice (and what I have personally been doing when I see it) is to block them if you see this. Not sure that reporting them to Substack will do anything, because the account doesn’t seem to be violating any TOS. Stay vigilant. Protect your intellectual property.
Substack publishers: are you experiencing this?
Sound off in the comments below, or better yet, restack it with a note, share this post and tag me to let me know whether or not you’re seeing this too!
Hi! I’m Indie. “Indie” is not just a person - but a persona and a project representing a fiercely independent, anti-corporate media operation. It’s the voice of a politically unaligned critic and curator who exists outside the traditional Left-Right duopoly. The mission is to seek a trustworthy alternative set of sources apart from the mainstream media (MSM) by championing and amplifying truly independent journalists and perspectives that are corporate-free.
Founder, IndieNews Network (INN)
Publisher, Indie Media Today, IndieNewsNow.com &
Producer, co-host & livestream engineer of multiple shows
Founder, the Indie Media Awards
Break free from the media focused on the duopoly and discover the news you’re not supposed to see!
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.
Thank you for the warning!