AO3 got a wave of spam comments a few weeks ago (including lots of “I bet this junk was written with [AI program the bot is advertising]” abuse), and part of their response was, new works are now default-marked as “only registered users can comment.”
If you, like me, enjoy getting guest comments but will definitely not remember to change the default setting every time you post something new, here’s a little browser script to automatically swap it back.
Feels like part of a much bigger sea change in how people use the internet. When blogs were widespread but social-media sites hadn’t really taken off, “allow guest comments” was…kind of the expectation? Forums were big there too, and it wasn’t expected on forums, but every WordPress-based blog defaults to allowing them, every Livejournal fork (including Dreamwidth) defaults to allowing them.
(This is only feasible if you have some robust spam-filtering software underneath. I just checked Leif & Thorn, there are 8 garbage comments in the spam filter right now. Including, hilariously, one that says “why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when you could be giving us something informative to read?” Guess how many videos are in that post. Go on, guess.)
The next generation of platforms, you have to be logged-in just to interact. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Youtube…on and on and on. All of them want to be their own little walled gardens.
Protocols like OpenID have been around that whole time! We have the software for (say) Facebook to accept a Tumblr login as a recognized “account” and vice versa! But the corporate will to adopt it isn’t there. Facebook doesn’t want users to have the option of using another site as their home base. They want everyone to be forced to use Facebook, or else.
AO3 was specifically built by Livejournal content-purge refugees, so it has LJ-style defaults built in. I bet nobody signing up for AO3 in 2024 has used LJ. I wonder how many of them have ever used any other platform that allowed guest comments? There have to be a lot of users who never thought “I want to turn off the guest-comments option” because it didn’t occur to them that guest comments are A Thing Platforms Let You Do in the first place.
On the one hand, there’s something to be said for meeting people where they’re at. User-friendliness is good!
On the other…not allowing guest comments is something FB/T/T/IG/YT/etc do to force signups, drive up their profits, juice their statistics for the benefit of advertisers and investors. It’s a bummer that this ethos has gotten so entrenched in the internet-at-large that AO3 — which has none of those motives! — is still getting swept along with it.
I just hope they never get pressured to remove the option completely. AO3 is not a corporate walled garden — it’s a community for anyone who cares about fanfiction, whether you take the extra step and make an account, or not. We deserve communities like that! We deserve, in general, an internet where platforms like that still exist.
Humanist+Humorist 