A Story about Attackers Infiltrating Vocal

Hello, fellow Vocal Authors.

I’m ___Lightning Bolt⚡, a.k.a. Bill O’Neal.

Over the course of the next several days, I’m going to share a lot of information with you that I've uncovered about the spammers and thieves who have infiltrated this platform.

These problems began just a few short months ago with a massive bot attack.

Now, things have changed. We are seeing ongoing acts of plagiarism. 'Real people' are now involved in these attacks. In my considered opinion, it is an entire network of people who are helping each other in insidious ways.

A Network of Infiltrators.

I have spent dozens hours over the course of the last three days doing my own amateur detective work. I have much to share with you. I also have questions directly for Vocal. I am skeptical that Vocal will answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway (many more questions than the few that appear in this First Chapter.)

If nothing else, what I uncovered will hopefully give you some insight on what to watch for.

I have a keen eye for details. Because of my mission, I have discovered many patterns. These are patterns that previously escaped my notice. I am not a detective, and I freely admit that I sometimes make the wrong assumptions.

Today and tomorrow, I’ll show you what I’ve found.

You be the judge.

I have a certain reluctance to publish this. That is because this story could/will tip these people off.

These attackers are clever. And based on the evidence I've collected, I believe many are in league with each other.

I don’t even know what term to use when describing these people. Spammers, thieves, plagiarists, infiltrators… maybe also hackers. I’ll generally stick with a blanket term of “attackers.”

I am an administrator for a Facebook group called The Vocal Social Society. We are authors who support each other by reading each other’s stories. I believe some of these attackers have also infiltrated our group. I banned one yesterday after he was detected by another one of our Society members.

As I began this quest two days ago, I let my good friends in the Society know what I was doing. They were able to provide a lot of additional information about their own experiences with these attackers.

Before I get into the details of what I’ve uncovered (which will happen tomorrow), I want to start with a relevant story.

Imagine this….

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A group of people first attack a platform like Medium. They steal a bunch of original material. This material can be used to help infiltrate Vocal. It amounts to legitimate stories recycled. Further, they all use A.I. consistently. A.I. allows them to manipulate the stories they steal, making them much less recognizable.

Their most-often-used, most insidious asset is A.I.. (Duh.)

At least one attacker pays for Vocal+. There are likely many/several that pay for Vocal+. They have strange sounding names (Indian and Mideastern, I think). Sometimes their names seem like a jumble of letters (but there is a purpose to that that I'll eventually explain.) They have strange profiles.

Let's discuss one suspect as an example...

Initially, when this attacker first engages with people, he drops short, odd comments, often with several emojis. The comments are clearly not made by someone who's actually read your stories.

This attacker’s first action after subscribing to you is to read numerous stories of yours. When you see him for the very first time, it's in your notifications. You see he first subscribed to you, and then he liked 6-8 of your stories. Again, he leaves short generic comments, sometimes no more than “Wow”.

Since he’s read numerous stories of yours, all at once-- he hopes you’ll subscribe to him.

Many authors do. No one has any cause to suspect him.

As this person reads more, he adapts. He learns. He ups his game. To make his comments more credible, he starts stealing the comments from others to use as his own.

Let’s say a certain author uses a praying hands emoji. He starts using that same emoji when replying to them, or when he leaves comments on their stories.

So now, because he started the connection and authors then respond to him, subscribing to him-- a kind of (misplaced) trust is established.

This attacker is especially interested in the juiciest targets, like Top Stories and Challenge winners.

Despite the fact he's a Vocal+ member, he never enters the challenges himself.

Vocal allows for people to like/heart stories without us being aware who dropped those likes.

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VOCAL: WHY???? On FB, I simply hover my cursor over the hearts, and I can see every person that liked my post. Why don't you allow that also? Because here is what can happen…

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This attacker can go and like his own stories.

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VOCAL: WHY do you allow that?!? Why can we like our own stories?

Why can’t we see who liked our stories?

In my opinion, it wasn’t that big of deal in past. Now, however? It’s absolutely necessary to protect our work. We need to be able to identify patterns. We need to know if we’re being liked by authors we trust… or suspicious people we’ve never heard of before.

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By liking someone without commenting, the attacker is cloaked. Not only can he like his own stuff, but he can also like the stories of his network of fellow attackers. The more likes a story has, the more legitimate they seem.

Think of this paid subscriber as a scout, a spy. He scopes out people, scopes out targets, and scopes out communities. Perhaps he even figures out profile pics to steal-- from authors no longer publishing on Vocal.

As a new person who doesn't have any trust yet, he hits communities that have fewer eyes to see suspicious posts.

Why attack Poets with 42,692 creators, or Fiction with 35,679 eyes watching? There are softer targets. It's no coincidence that neither Poets or Fiction (or Horror, or Futurism) are the initial targets. Those stories require way more original creativity than A.I. can match.

This attacker scouts and learns the terrain. At the same time, he begins to produce massive amounts of stories. They roll through our notifications on a constant basis.

Let’s say this attacker produces 550 stories in just three months!!!

Further, one of his early stories receives a Top Story award, giving him even more credibility. Of course, that Top Story of his is pinned to his profile.

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I've been on Vocal for years. I carefully craft what I write. I currently have 148 stories, including one that just received an Honorable Mention in the Utopia challenge ==> The Taco Bell of Tomorrow.

People who are strictly poets can produce way more than I can. That’s natural. A haiku takes mere minutes to write.

As for me, I mainly stick to Fiction, Futurism, Horror, and Humor—with also some poetry mixed in. Some of my fiction has taken days of focused research to complete (like this for the Letters Through Time challenge entry.)

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This attacker is clearly using A.I.. That’s obvious because of 1) the formatting clearly fits A.I. generated posts. Even more obvious 2) the volume of his stories can never be produced by an author who must first conceptualize an original premise and then write the story.

Even factual stories take more time to create than this person takes. He publishes with super speed.

This attacker never, however, identifies his stories as being A.I.. He doesn’t slap that A.I. warning on any of his posts.

So initially, after first joining Vocal, where does this attacker publish?

Earth, Criminal, Petlife, Feast, Longevity, History, Families.

Recipes are easy to steal off the internet. Criminals, History—also ripe to take information off the internet and then use A.I. to tweak it.

For his first 60 stories (clearly produced incredibly fast by A.I.) those communities are the only places he drops his computer-written stories. Then, slowly, Art gets mixed in. <--More fact based A.I.-created articles. FYI stories appear— same thing. He starts posting in Confessions and Journal (remember me mentioning Journal.)

Then, slowly, poetry gets added to his submissions. Very little poetry, however.

On his earliest stories, he has no comments except his own. A comment from one of his stories reads, (written by himself)… <<"Thank you so much for reading my work! Any feedback or support that you have to offer is accepted and appreciated">> Not even a period at the end of the comment for a perfectly punctuated story.

Does that👆, in itself, seem like a comment that could easily be stolen elsewhere?

One day, for an entire day, this attacker publishes in Art, Art, Art, Confessions, History, Art. These are all A.I. generated with no identifying A.I. tag.

Slowly, days later, a little micro fiction and poetry creep into his mix.

The tags are strange. There are tags that don’t fit the community, bunches and bunches of tags.

Tags on Vocal are easily manipulated. Every community has a minimum word count… except poetry.

Oh, I take that back. Poetry has a five-word limit.

The Poets Community also has a ton of tags.

Other communities have too few appropriate tags, IMO. (But that's a whole other story.)

Here’s what a savvy user can do….

Let’s say the attacker wants to post a sci fi poem in Futurism. But his poem only has 300 words. Too few to be placed in Futurism.

But that word count limit is ultimately meaningless if you know what to do.

The attacker takes the 300-word poem (or even a 30-word poem) and submits it for review in the Poet community. The attacker adds all the tags (or at least a bunch.)

They publish it in Poetry.

It’s approved.

Family is a poetry tag. Filthy is a poetry tag. These tags, perhaps, also offer some cover when this poem is then switched to the Family or Filthy communities?

His 300 words are published in Poets. The next step for this Vocal+ member is to hit the Edit button. The 'Story Settings' button is then available. He opens up 'Publish as a Community Story.' He selects Futurism (where it’s not allowed because of the low word count.) He adds all the tags from Futurism, or at least most of them.

Publish.

Viola!

There isn't even an approval needed. It was already approved for Poets.

Instantly, he sees...

"Your story is now live."

His story is now in Futurism. And guess what else?

It now has both the Futurism tags and the poetry tags.

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I just tested this with an incomplete draft of my own. Let me show you how it works. This draft has only 89 words (--a draft with some initial thoughts as I conceptualize an entry for the Tattoo challenge.)

Check out the tags...

Some of those tags 👆 are from Poets. I could have added all the poetry tags if I wanted to. Some of those tags👆 are from when I swapped it over to Futurism. I could have added all the Futurism tags.

He/I just sidestepped around the word count and ended up with tags for both communities.

{After I took these screenshots to show you how this works, I unpublished this example.}

⚡____________⚡

Back to My Attacker story...

So.

We have this infiltrator who pays for Vocal+. Several paid infiltrators in all likelihood. But there is nothing overtly suspicious about their accounts, other than the vast number of stories produced. There are no bad links, no obvious signs of theft or spamming. These infiltrators are there as scouts, spies ... and they offer cover/support for the bunch of free subscribers that then join Vocal.

MEANWHILE...

Besides determining which people to target, what comments to steal, which communities are optimal places to hit, these attackers quickly determine the best times to hit.

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These may be two separate things happening. Perhaps these infiltrators have no connection to the late-night spam drops.

I have epileptic seizures, which cause me to sleep erratically. Sometimes I'm up at 3-4-5 a.m. And soooo many nights around 4 a.m-4:30 a.m. EST, there are numerous spam posts that drop back-to-back, very quickly. I saw a huge group of such attacks not long ago. I reported them, but hadn't yet noticed all these connections, so I didn't take screen shots. But here's basically what happened/happens...

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In the wee hours of the morning, when most Americans are asleep, the spam is published rapidly, dozens upon dozens. These spam posts are easy to detect if you're up that late. All you have to do is watch the Latest Stories feed.

Let's say, as an example (what I'm about to describe actually happened), a spammer wants to get malicious links published. They create a bevy of stories all about exactly the same thing. Expedia, for example. They are writing about how to get refunds from Expedia. They write about the best ways to book flights.

Expedia, Expedia, Expedia.

Watching the Latest Story feed, the word "Expedia" is in 20 or more of these posts. The titles are changed slightly, but all include the word "Expedia." And the ones that don't have that word? They have identical pictures to the ones with Expedia in the title.

Planes, planes, and more planes.

Many of these stories include phone numbers. Many of these profiles include phone numbers.

Where do such posts get published?

Mostly Journal. Over and over, Journal is hit at night. There are fewer eyes there to detect things, and fewer people to report spam.

The other places these spam posts often go to are Gamers, 01, Critique, sometimes Lifehack.

With 01, there is a certain amount of cover. Expedia was just one (true) example. Some spam posts are about products, services, bitcoins, things that almost seem to fit in 01. Sorta. Especially if the titles don't match the actual story.

That would mean that for most Americans who go to those communities-- those spam posts will be waiting for them in the morning when they first wake up.

So...

Initially on Vocal, it was that massive bot attack. HUGE. That's what happened in March. Vocal freely admitted the volume of attacks was incredible. For a while, authors had go through the extra step of verifying we're human.

I even added that 'verify you're a human' step into my Absurdist Aventure challenge entry. (I didn't place in that challenge, but I did receive a Top Story for that.)

Cloudflare was employed to weed out the bots.

But then what happened after the bot attack?

New 'authors'/attackers joined Vocal. These are actual human beings, but all their stories are A.I. generated. You look at these attackers' profiles and what do you see, over and over and over again?

Joined in March. Joined in March. Joined in March. Joined Vocal in March.

And just as many Joined in April, Joined in April, Joined in April.

Over and over and over.

All these attackers have certain identifiable patterns. But they are hard to detect, especially because they support each other, lending credibility to each other.

Another interesting tidbit?

I heard from a friend that Vocal fired their moderation team.

There are still more techniques that these infiltrators use.

But this is the basic premise for my story.

What do you think?

If I were to write this as a fictional story about a fictional online platform-- call it Local-- would this story be believable?

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I am going to stop reporting now. I've actually worked on this story for hours. I always have to edit a lot because of my scattered brain. And I've had some very long, trying days this week. But I have way more information to share with you.

I'm going to publish this chapter tonight: May 7, 2025.

Tomorrow, if all goes as I plan, I am going to publish another story with specific details. I will share more about these attackers' tactics, and how they are consistently slipping under our radar.

This personal investigation began for me when I saw in my Notifications feed that a story title exactly matched the title of a Top Story written by one of my friends. I was astonished that nothing had been changed.

It was blatant.

My friend in the UK was justifiably upset. She engaged this person. She basically said he was a thief.

This attacker fought back, arguing with her. He claimed after her accusations that his story was not her story. (It certainly was.) He told her to delete her comments from 'his' (her stolen) story.

She refused.

Then he deleted her stolen story from his profile, an admission of guilt.

By then, we had reported him.

Only a few hours later, his profile vanished altogether, probably long before Vocal could respond to our petitions. I doubt Vocal knows what he did. I doubt they know where he went next.

But I do.

Ideally, I would've preferred to tell you everything all at once. But I have so much more to share, including dozens of screenshots.

Are you appalled and intrigued?

It was because my friend clearly had her story stolen that I set off on this mission. He definitely was a thief. So, I wanted to see who commented on his posts, who associated with him. Then I wanted to see who associated with the people that associated with the thief's associates. I was cross-referencing, backtracking as I found more, snapping screen shots, taking a deep dive into all this. I have examined, especially, Top Stories, and challenge entries.

What I found was pretty shocking (excuse the pun.)

⚡⚡More to Come Soon.⚡⚡

_______________Bolt⚡

PS- When I wrote this on the 7th, I said I'd have more on 5/8. Obviously, that didn't happen.

I was amazed to the reaction to this story. So many people are forming stronger connections for a common goal.

So it's taking a little longer for me to compile everything I plan to share with you...

... but I think it will be worth the wait.

⚡😎👍