Are there now spam followers as well?
I don't really care about most metrics on steem because all of them can somehow be manipulated. Reputation is manipulated by using voting services or being involved in flag wars. Account age doesn't tell much and the curation pie gets messed up when people sell their vote. Followers kind of gives an idea but as with every social media they can be bought.
I kind of have a vague idea of where my metrics are but I don't strive for any goals. Being served the numbers every time subconsciously I kind of know where they are. Today I noticed my followers count was 650 something. I'm not sure why but my head was telling me it was 560 yesterday. 650 vs 560. Having relatives who worked with brain damaged patients and close family with brain tumors I don't like these kind of confusions. I went to check steemworld and it seems I'm not going mad.
In the course of a couple of minutes several tens of accounts followed me. I have no idea why. I didn't pay anyone to do so and I didn't do anything special.
I shared this with @abh12345 and @paulag because I know they are into these kind of things. Maybe they'll do some analysis on it and we'll hear from it later. Asher noted that there was a correlation. This happened exactly after I made my last post at 10:22. The follwing started a minute later.
I quickly checked a couple of them and as is to be expected these accounts don't look like real accounts. So, ... do we now have programmers creating spam followers? What's the use? Or was this maybe a mistake from a service that does this for profit and I was the 'lucky' one to 'profit' from their mistake. No idea.
I've been having the exact same thing happening to me as of late. It is usually right after I post an article. I quickly notice 10, 20, sometimes as many as 60 or 70 new followers within minutes and this is really sort of fishy.
Keep me posted on this if you hear back from @paulag and/or @abh12345 as I am curious to know what they might find in their analysis.
Thanks for sharing @jefpatat
It seems that way :/
I'm only 22 from 10000, it's a pity most are 'dead, and now, 'spam' followers!
Not sure what we can analyse here, it seems clear that they arrive following a top level Post create. Maybe we could check how many arrive each day if this keeps happening. Sigh.
Same here. I notice this early on when the same account following me each time I post. (especially when they profile picture is bitcoin :v )
Hmmm.... now that I think about it I think that's happened to me too.
I don't put too much attention to how many followers I have, but I did get about 10 or so new follower notification from esteem after my last post, and II only got 2 actual people I can confirm are real (though they're good ones :) )
Dammit, someone's probably gone and made the "if one in 1000 check what their new followers post, and 1 in 1000 of those upvotes any posts by new followers, then I profit if I make several thousand accounts" leap of (stupid horrible malicious) faith XO
hmm... the talk about mistakes reminds me I still have that 5-10 SP delegation to me from some anonymous delegation service that came out of the blue several months ago... Never did track down who that was from XS
Let's hope this is just someone's stupid experiment and not a new trend...
I have been getting the same thing, 20-40 extra followers out of the blue and they are all mute and with random names...
I find it kind of annoying but nothing you can do for now... good to have paula and abh check on that
One thing I noticed from the flood of "new followers" was that a lot of these accounts were created at roughly the same time. Worth a look! But the purpose is also not clear to me...