Early one morning I received an email notification about a bug report to one of my open source projects. I like to be helpful and I want people who use my stuff to have a good time, so I gave it my attention. Here's what it said:
😱 I Can't Use On This Day 😭
Seriously, What’s Going On?!
I’ve been trying to use the On This Day feature, but it’s just not working for me!
Every time I input my details, it says I have no posts for today, even though I know I’ve posted stuff!
Here’s My Setup: ⚙
Python 3.x
Access token fully generated (I triple-checked!)
Attempted on multiple instances but still nothing!
Could It Be a Bug? 🤔
I’m really starting to doubt my posting history!
Is it supposed to show only specific types of posts? I’ve made some pretty epic posts before!
Documentation Confusion 📚
The README says to register for an access token but doesn’t clarify if it factors into this feature!
Did I miss something REALLY important?! Help me figure this out, please!!!
Feature Suggestion 💭
If this is broken, can we at least have a debug mode to log what’s happening!
I need to know if it’s truly my fault or the code’s!
Thanks for looking into this TRAGIC situation!!!
P.S. My friends ARE posting on this day and their instances work!!
I feel so left out!!
Let’s get this sorted ASAP!
OK, that's a lot of Emoji - too much even for me! But if one of my users needs help, I'm there for them! As the feature works for me, I decided I'd ask for the output of the app. Maybe there'd be a clue in the minimal debugging output it had.
I clicked on the link to the Codeberg repository and was hit be a 404! What? I clicked on the link to the user "simpleseaport2" but that was also broken.
"Seriously, What’s Going On?! "
It looks like Codeberg has been hit by a wave of spam bug reports. I read through the bug report again, slightly more awake, and saw just how content free it was. Yes, it is superficially well structured, the Emoji are a bit over-the-top but not the worst I've seen, and the emotional manipulation is quite insidious.
A few weeks later, I got a bug report to a different repo. This one was also deleted before I could reply to it, see if you can spot that it is AI generated:
I've been trying to use the Threads tool to visualize some conversations but I'm running into a serious problem, and it's really frustrating!
When I input the URL for a post with a substantial number of replies, the script seems to hang indefinitely. I've waited more than 15 minutes on a couple of occasions, and nothing seems to happen. This is not what I expected, especially since the README mentions large conversations may take a long time, but doesn’t specify any limits or give guidance on what users should do if it doesn’t respond at all!
It's unclear what's actually happening here. Is the script failing silently? Is it the API timing out? Why isn’t there any sort of progress notification built into the tool? It feels like a complete dead end.
Can you please add some kind of error handling or logging feature to the Threads script? It would be helpful if it could at least inform the user when a timeout occurs or if the API response is simply taking too long. Additionally, could you clarify the maximum number of replies that can be handled? It’s really inconvenient to have no idea if the script is still processing or if it’s just broken.
Thanks for addressing this. I hope to see improvements soon.
The emotional manipulation starts in the first line - telling me how frustrated the user is.It turns the blame on me for providing poor guidance.Then the criticism of the tool.Next, a request that I do work.Finally some more emotional baggage for me to carry.
I'm not alone in getting these - other people have also received similar spam
To be fair to Codeberg, they are under attack and are trying to stop these specious complaints reaching maintainers.
But, still, search the socials and you'll find a stream of frustrated developers.
Woke this morning to my first ever AI generated spam issue on a repo. Got it via email. When I went to check it out at Codeberg, it had already been moderated. Wonder how many others were affected. I immediately knew it was AI spam due to the overuse of emojis…
[image or embed]
— Jeff Sikes (@bsky.box464.social) 24 April 2025 at 15:07
What's Going On⁉
I can only think of a few possibilities - none of them particularly positive.
Attacking the viability of CodeBerg - make users abandon it for a different platform.Attacking the attention of developers - make them unwilling to give attention where it is actually needed.Attacking the integrity of users - make them less likely to receive help because they are mistaken for AI.Maybe it is just a bored kid or an unethical researcher. Trying to find the limits of what a maintainer will recognise as spam?
Either way, AI bug reports like this are about as welcome as a haemorrhage in a jacuzzi.
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