Yeah, we have already talked about this several times, to be honest.
I began to ignore them instead of thinking they are damaging or dangerous, like really, best course of action is to ignore them and done.
Some people just want to delude themselves into thinking that by doing that they'll get a loyal subscriber or just want to inflate a number so actual readers are motivated to subscribe or like, its kinda like when you have a lemonade stand and put $5 on the tip jar so people feel more inclined to buy/tip you.
Promotion threads -> I ignore them
People sending me DMs to sub to their stories -> "Sorry, its not of my liking" / "Sorry, I don't do sub x sub" / "Sorry but doing this feels shallow, I don't sub to other people just because they sub to me"
If it were my forum, I'll remove the ability to create Topics in said category and simply have 4 Topics there.
Road to Milestone (Comics)
Road to Milestone (Novels)
Share your latest update (Comics)
Share your latest update (Novels)
In Milestone, while making your goal you can do your introduction there and that's it. Then the other one can be used to spam whenever you have a new update.
To be fair, many just think that by spamming their updates on several Topics or creating their own, people will develop curiosity and check them out. Personally for me it just makes me ignore them even more. And nowadays, my DMs are only for work related stuff, so I know that if there are some compliments about my art/story I simply know someone is going to ask for a favor, usually to read them or give them something for free, so I'm already used to reject people.
Muting the promo Topics doesn't remove them from appearing on top of the Index of the Forum, besides it pushes down any other Topics, so try to scroll down and try to engage in other ones where the focus is not Self-Promotion.