What's up with all these instant (new account) followers after publishing a new post?
Ginabot went nuts tonight after publishing a post
Well of course went nuts is exaggerated, because we all know how many notifications you may get when a trail visits your post, but something was off when this happened.
I was chatting in the @alldutch community with a few people and told them that the very same second I got the notification from @ginabot at discord, there were all these messages of new followers too.
Before I started using the Ginabot (I didn't until a few weeks ago) I looked in at my new followers at steemworld.org and then it's a bit more handling to check the profiles out.
The nice thing with Ginabot is, that you see all the info about the account that you would like to know too, when receiving the notification about someone that pressed the follow button.
So I noticed tonight the followers all had rep 25 (new accounts mostly) so that's a strange coincidence ?
I asked the members in the discord chat if they had noticed this too, because I had noticed it earlier too with a few followers at once, but not that many. Someone told me his girlfriend had this too...
Today I published another post before lunchtime
And the same thing happened, so to me this doesn't sound like a coincidence anymore. I also heard from the same member mentioned above, that he had 14 followers at once today too.
I decided that I would like to find out why this is happening, and put them in this image above, to show that they are all following at once.
Of course I don't have to follow them back
So you can think, what's the problem? But I want to make sure this is not something to worry about. I mean these are obviously spam accounts, otherwise they would not be all following at once (at least that's what my guess is). Maybe a few are legit accounts, so if you're in my image don't feel offended, I copied the whole list of today...
I wonder why someone would use all these accounts to follow random people right after publishing a post? What's the reason for this? And more important, I wonder if I have to worry about safety?
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I like to analyse things, and this is something I noticed and would like to know more about.
Did you notice this activity on your account too? I would appreciate it if you left a comment below. Maybe there's a pattern in this, or maybe someone has an explanation for this.
This happens probably in hope to get followed back or they are automated bots trying to gain profile activity.
But normally you find some of these accounts that of course hope that they get followers, that's normal.. And I am not surprised by that anymore. The thing is, how is it possible that there are these many accounts following me the same second as I publish my post ? That almost seems like a bot ? It's strange .. and started a few days ago, but not 13 at once .. only a few..
Ok...now I’m feeling pathetic. In my last couple of posts only 2-3 new following bots followed me. Damn...you know you are fairly pathetic when even robots don’t like you. Lol
Lol you made me laugh here :) Getting inspired for a meme lol
Lol. Do it!! Tag me once done
Will do, working on my deadline post first :) But I already got the image lol..
Working on something serious now first, but I was planning on tagging you before you mentioned it lol.. just wait for it..
I’ll be waiting!!! Ok...go get serious. Lol
(hearing Pink singing) Why so seriousssssssssssss
But if you'd like you can have all of mine!
Screw the robots! Not gonna beg for virtual friendships! I will on the other hand beg pathetically to all who read my nonsense for some human lovin....
No not like that. I mean...unless...nah. Or people can just send a pic....I dunno. Forget it. Or send it.
Lol, well I was so happy crossing the border of 2k followers.. and right after that moment I got the bot account trails following me .. pfffffff Ain't nothing fun bout that right?
Rather have real followers, and no, I don't do follow for follow anyways, so that got nothing on me here...
Yeah I hear that. Still a new fish here but feel good about where I’m at. A little over 200 followers so far but in reality maybe 10% are ones that I interact with or vice versa. The rest or a chunk of the rest I’m guessing are dogshit not accounts. Sad. I want this place to grow with real interaction!!
Well I just pressed the follow button :) And I actually do interact so.. that makes one more lol
Yay. Ditto!!
Same here @anouk.nox.
Yesterday, today twice as I did post twice today which does not happen often.
10 to 15 new followers exactly the moment you push the post button.
It must be something automized.
I also saw very few "older" accounts (more than 100 days old) but also with reputation 25 mainly.
If you look into these accounts there is not much to discover.
Don't get me wrong: I love new followers - but please followers who are interested in my posts.
My theory is that still many people do follow for follow which IMHO is not very smart. I follow people because I like what they create here and not because they follow me - but everybody must decide this for himself/herself.
This follow for follow creates lots of followers for these accounts and they could start a paid resteem-service soon.
Until now I don't know a resteem service that could help me however but it looks like many people try it.
So is it just a very simple business model?
I'm not sure but until now it's my only explanation.
Let's see what happens.
Until then: steem on! :)
I think that's it. What other reason can there be to create several accounts that connect followers via the follow you follow me principle?
Most of these accounts I saw in my ginabot were created precisely at the same time.
I call it the bots trail 😩
There is one thing I don't understand. Why would someone create 5 or even more of these accounts?
but I have it too, and I do not have a follow me I follow you on? I usedto have that with shadowbot but I am not in it anymore.
But those bots are just following as much Steemonians as possible. And most people don't follow them back. They just know that if they follow 25k people that they will have 2-5k followers themselves. And then they probably try to sell a resteem service.
I noticed that too.. accounts of several created on the same day.. indeed seems like a bots trail
There is one thing I can't remember for sure. But I have a feeling that one of these trails had the 15 delegated SP. And that would be a bit strange, as someone needs to register a phone number. So that means you need to have like 3+ phone numbers.
But perhaps I just think they I saw it one time, but am I confusing it with something else....?
Dito here... also like 15 profile picture-less followers extra in no time after posting.
I've noticed the same thing, also thought that it might have been spam accounts or bots perhaps.
Found this handy tool to check how many of your followers are actually active. Don't know if you'd heard of this.
https://steem.agency/follower/followers
Thanks, @daan!
I did not know about this tool and just saw that you can also check the people you are following.
Great tool!
Same here. Most of the "instant followers" have a rep of 25, but are also following 5000+ people already.
Almost certainly bots.
I saw a spike in my followers immediately after I posted my steemit link on a discord channel....seems like bots to me!
Quite a lot of comments to read again and search for new ones. None of these comments fully solved this mystery, correct?
Nope, none of the answers to the mystery.. I have quite a lot of new followers again after posting.. Any idea yourself what is causing it?
No not really. Normally I would say someone is creating a resteem service or they will upvote all their own accounts. But so far none of these seems to happen.
Another guess is that Steemit Inc created it. To make it look like we all are really popular. But that actually doesn't really make sense.
As of this night it seems that it stopped.
Yep. In the last few minutes, I had 27. 27! All of them have no picture.
Wow 27 thats a record so far :) but not the record you would love to have ;)
This happens to me also > . <
22 accounts followed me on the same time ..