Why are there so many spam comments?

[crisyah]

I'm getting spammed by them, too. They're even getting creative and leaving "feedback" now (that has nothing to do with what happened in the chapter, mind you, and that called me a "he").

[Yorth]

Yeah, it's insane. From what I understand, they probably have a list of positive feedback comments that they randomly pick from. What's weird about it is that they live in this uncanny valley, where the feedback is very detailed but just vague enough to tell me that it's just an automated response. I got one comment recently that had especially given me the creeps and it goes like this:

The author takes some liberties in logic and there are a couple of “he did not just go there” moments, but his writing style overcomes any of that kind of criticism . ... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top

How crazy is this?!!

[snowy]

They're dropping their "this is a great novel !" in comic's comment sections now. Lol.

[Yorth]

That's a yikes from me...

[Crusoe]

Yeah, tapas usually has systems in place to check for spam, but sometimes there's an uptick in it. Best to just block the users and try to ignore it.

[crisyah]

That's the exact same one I got lmao!!!

[Yorth]

Wow, it's nice to see a fellow "he did not just go there" author. We seem to be an increasingly common breed, lmao

[cherrystark]

I think all the novelstar spam is sad. The spam comments even went as far as my inactive booksie account. I looked Novelstar up and it's a real app on the playstore. They were advertising the popular romance stuff: werewolves, mafia, billionaires, etc, but most of the reviews were able how few stories there were. A lot of authors are going to stay away before of their stupid spam comments.

[Yorth]

They seem to have that growth at all cost mentality. If they had a dollar, they would much rather spend it on advertisement to get new users in than to develop their very veryyy buggy app. Just posting my story using their trash editor has been an absolute nightmare. It crashes at the most random clicks and touches.

[cherrystark]

Yikes. I definitely agree, fix the app and then start advertising.

[sushy00]

I haven't had those yet

[Yorth]

wow, for a comic as large as yours that is seriously weird. I guess they target novels more than comics because that's what their website is for

[therosesword]

Those "Novelstar" things are showing up everywhere.

[therosesword]

For me, if companies advertise like that... nope, not going there. It's a total turn off.

[C-Gamsby]

I got a comment like that, and I too was a flutter when I saw someone left a comment. Though it does say if I use the service I can 'make big bucks...'

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Haven't gotten that particular spam (yet) but I did get a flood once of comments on every episode... it was "come see my sexy website" spam.

[Kaydreamer]

Is this just happening to novels, or is it happening to comics as well? I haven't had any such comments, and I dread receiving any. It sounds like a right pain in the bum.

[cherrystark]

So far just novels I think. A lot of the comments start with something like "Oh wow! I wonder what's going to happen next" or "Oh no he didn't" before jumping into a short spiel about bringing our talent to novelstar.

[Kaydreamer]

Icky. That's so frustrating... I hope Tapas may be able to incorporate some sort of keyword filter in their comments script which blocks comments containing words such as 'novelstar' in order to cut down on this spam.

[cherrystark]

It would be nice but I doubt something like that can happen. The spammers would just change their code, like all the pornbot spam we got hit with a few months ago. Before novelstar, I remember seeing bots for x novel, y novel, stuff like that.