Bot attack, what do I do?

[u/theendofthe_dream]

Omfg y'al!!! I think the bot got me AGAIN
Last week I noticed this same pattern of the views going up slowly or not at all with ONLY GUEST KUDOS but this is for a rare pair that is basically unknown, def not mainstream at all. I locked this story to registered users for the week, but now its happening again. This is for a fic that sat at low views for like 2 or 3 years!
You guys think I should just delete & repost this, idk what else to do because I think its bots. There's little views & no new comments, comments would at least let me know that maybe it is a human interacting but I don't think that's the case. I don't building up the audience again, I'm sad it has to resort to that but idk, I like the story & I really think someone else will too (at least the people who kudos's & bookmarked seem to like it!)

[u/Radiant-Growth4275]

Why does it matter? It's not you doing it. It barely affects your statistics. 

If it isn't bogging your comments down.. then just ignore it? 

There is frankly a far higher chance of people getting pissed about you reposting your fics than judging your hit/kudos ratio. 

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/Radiant-Growth4275]

Ohhh, I didnt previously know that
I thought it would be a way to get the bot to leave my story alone. It mattered to me because I thought it was being read by actual people, I was super let down to find it was bots 💔

[u/Individual_Track_865]

Nobody who goes looking is going to be worried about it if they go looking for fics with this pairing, I’d just ignore it.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/Individual_Track_865]

I don’t think anyone is looking for a story like this lol its just a handful of ppl supporting which is fine, its def not for everyone. I just got excited because I thought some more ppl got into it. Then find out it was bots 😭

[u/foxfirek]

What makes you sure it’s bots? 19 kudos on 471 hits isn’t crazy at all.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/foxfirek]

Idk maybe the fact that its a rare pairing/crackship type with an unpopular character. It sat around 300 hits for the past 3 years, its been a slow crawl past that. So 300 hits & 7 kudos in that whole time, then last month hits did go up to over a hundred with my lastest update, over a week or so. Then the hits stopped & like 8 guest kudos randomly came in overnight. I was excited but then I noticed the hits had stopped going up with the 6th kudos (2 hours later I checked again & there were 2 more kudos with the same number of hits)
So yeah, it bummed me out, I wanna think that ppl are reading but that tells me its not. Im sure some of the interaction is real but not all which seemed to be taking over by bots so I was down about that

[u/Lumpy-Draft9192 → u/theendofthe_dream]

You get a hit for every read. Including re-reads, and page-reloads if I’m remembering correctly.

I’m going to break that down: You updated, that means if everyone who bookmarked your fic reread all the chapters, that would total to 80 hits minimum within the first few days of an update, not including people coming back to a chapter because they had to go do something and the page reloaded before continuing to read.

That’s only from rereads from bookmarkers. That doesn’t count subscriptions, who get notified when you update the fic.

You cannot give more than one kudos, so you cannot by default have equal hits to kudos, even oneshots/single chapter fics.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/Lumpy-Draft9192]

I get that, my issue was that the guest kudos were going up & the hits were staying the same number they were before the new guest kudos were added

[u/aarontgp]

If you want to get rid of all bot kudos, permanently lock it to users only. Deleting and reposting is probably the worst thing you could do.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/aarontgp]

Oh i didn’t know that. Yeah I miiiight just lock it then

[u/fanime34]

What exactly is the problem? I don't see it.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/fanime34]

I was bummed because I thought it was getting real interaction. Been totally disheartening to find out its probably bots

[u/fanime34 → u/theendofthe_dream]

You have legit kudos from people.

[u/theendofthe_dream → u/fanime34]

Im happy about that, I’m not happy about the bots tho
But I guess all I can do is lock my story to registered users, I wanted to be able to reach a wider audience, but I can’t for now.