I never used Twitter but wanted to check out the new thing replacing it over on the edge of the Fediverse. Created an account with no bio or profile pic and followed a few dozen personalities that I recognized on there. Half a day later I have 18 followers.

I looked at some of them and they were obvious bots, usernames were random alphanumeric strings, or they were promoting onlyfans, or they were trying to build followings by reblogging popular posts but not contributing anything original or curating in any human way. Others seem more believable and have realistic bios and post somewhat engaging chatter.

Not knowing what the general user experience is, should I consider most random follows to be bots or is it common practice for users to see who follows pages you like and follow other people on that list? The somewhat convincing profiles have me a little queasy thinking of all the AI bots driving us increasingly toward a Dead Internet.

Not sure how long I’ll continue but happy to test it out and follow personalities I know from other platforms and enjoy their content, while blocking all of my followers that I don’t immediately recognize. Is that standard Twitter/Bluesky good practice or am I not “trusting the process” enough and allowing full access to randos? Closest to Twitter I came was Tumblr circa 2010-2016 and in that time I saw the bots increase dramatically in a way that sabotaged community trust and got quite stalkerish.

Interested in your thoughts even if they aren’t directly applicable to my experience.