On mastodon, I’m starting to be followed by accounts I have no relationship with at all (a famous guy I doubt would ever follow me, a supposed magazine about a subject I never talked about and with a name not really related to the subject of their posts…).
Is this a trend? Is it a strategy to get people to follow them back so they have more followers? Is this the fediverse version of spam?
I think it’s a strategy to get you to follow them back. I’ve had quite a few odd accounts request to follow me that I rejected. Usually accounts that were very specific and has zero relevance to my life or interests.
That’s my feeling as well, but… really? Randal Schwartz is hoping for me to follow him back?! The guy is a legend, I’m no one (literally - Ninguém means “no one” in portuguese).
As @[email protected] said, I can’t see a way for it to be nefarious except if it is some new kind of spam. But Randal wouldn’t exactly fit in “new people joining the platform without really understanding exactly how following people and following hashtags on mastodon is different than how it worked on Twitter or Instagram.”
Bah! I’ll just leave them there until they get tired of my boring conversations. 😁
Are you sure it’s not a fake scam account impersonating him?
If not he’s probably using some growth hacking tool to follow a bunch of people at once to boost his numbers.
No, I’m not sure of that. And the idea that it’s just a scam is what’s bugging me.
You’re not gonna like what’s coming.
I’m afraid you might be right!
What’s your theory?
My nightmare goes like this:
- Some form of spam and plain wrongdoing will emerge with the rise of awareness about this fediverse thing.
- To cut a long story short: then some form of control will have to be put in place - like spam filters, blacklists, server whitelists and the like - and the hole thing goes the way of the email and the usenet, making it almost impossible to keep a server as an independent hobbyist.
- Some cleaver provider will offer a free $ervice and enforces the control techniques mentioned above reinforcing its use and closing the circle.
My hope:
- This thing will “never fly” and consequently only really committed and interesting people will linger. Great!
- A second best hypothesis is becoming the second best forever - the best place to be, like linux.
- The fediverse community gets really large and popular and has so many servers and services that it becomes impossible to capture by a single giant player.
- People will “see it coming” and vote intelligently with their feet refusing the big players and choosing freedom instead. Hahahaha!..
It depends on how your platform handles unsolicited posts and whether it supports threads and the concept of conversation containers.
For example, let’s compare Mastodon and Hubzilla.
Mastodon does not notify you of replies to your posts, but does notify you if someone mentions you. It does not support threaded conversations, which means that anyone can comment on your post without your permission. You can block people, but that does not remove their posts or mentions.
Hubzilla takes a different approach. Conversations are organized in threads, and the thread has a conversation owner. It is similar to how Facebook works in that regard. If you create a top level post on your own wall, you own that conversation. Similarly, if you post in a forum/group, the forum/group owns that conversation.
As such, they can control who comments on it and even delete comments. You can even make private or group conversations that only certain people can participate in. Unsolicited comments are either discarded or accepted for moderation. They only appear if approved by the owner of the thread.
And there are additional filtering and notification settings available.
Because of this difference, undesired posts are more like to appear on Mastodon than on Hubzilla. And even if they do appear, they are easier to remove.
The more tools you have to control notifications and what appears as replies to your posts, the better. But it also makes the system slightly more complicated. Think Facebook vs. Twitter. Both are social media, but how they handle things are very different.
I am guessing that some platforms will fare better than others, and many platforms will have to adjust how they handle incoming posts as more people arrive in the fediverse.
I think it’s a symptom of new people joining the platform without really understanding exactly how following people and following hashtags on mastodon is different than how it worked on Twitter or Instagram. I wouldn’t immediately suspect anything nefarious.
It happens sometimes. Depending on the details, you can report them as spam, just remove the follow, or ignore it.
In some cases it could also be people that genuinely want to follow you. People often talk about one topic but still care about other stuff.
In some cases it could also be people that genuinely want to follow you. People often talk about one topic but still care about other stuff.
Many people fall into that category. I follow a lot of interesting accounts that have nothing to do with what I talk about on my channel. Sometimes you follow people because they know more about a subject than you do, or are just interesting.
