META: Thoughts on curating the list of people who follow you.

I’ve been bemused by the point of TrueTwit, the service that blocks you from following until you prove you are not a bot. Who cares if a bot follows you? Anyhow, accounts that use TwueTwit usually are the non-power user accounts, so it makes it expensive for followers to follow a low quality account and I suppose stops a few spam followers.

So, could there be any benefit to curating your list?

• Analytics. The machines are watching your account. To the degree it is junked up with bots and spammers the machines are going to think you have an interest in sex workers, make-money-fast-schemes, etc
• Your followers sometimes watch who is following you. How do I know? I look at follower lists all the time before I follow an account. Because your followers list is a honest evaluation of who cares about you and who you really are. (Anyone can follow a celebrity, but if a celebrity follows you, that means something) If I read your follower list and it is junked up with junk followers, it is harder to figure out who you really are.

Why do these spam followers even exist?

The spammers are using the follow as a way to get a message to you. The bio asks you to buy crap. I report and block these accounts. It’s a cost of doing business on a platform that holds all forms of moderation tools in contempt.

Types of junk followers:

• Randos- There is no obvious reason why they followed you. Maybe the machine suggested you, more likely you were followed at random.
• Wrong audience- For example, my main account is for professional networking. I don’t mind people reading my content and interacting with me, but it cost my time to read theirs. I either ignore or follow-mute these accounts.

Why follow-mute?

Twitter rewards you for having more followers by letting you follow more accounts. By default, somewhere around 2000 accounts, you can’t follow anymore until more people follow you. So I have an incentive to keep my followers, say by reciprocating. But I don’t have time to read their material, so I mute it.

Types of Spammers

Sex, Buying Followers, small local businesses who don’t realize they are spammers, Make-Money-Fast, actual businesses. The actual business, I usually ignore, but that is because they are the wrong audience for me. I report the abusive spammers, but the naive local businesses, I am more like to ignore. Business that I have a legit relationship with, because I mentioned them, or use their products or what have you, I follow-mute or ignore. They aren’t really spam.

Mess and Change of Strategy

When I started my account, I followed all sorts of people for no clear reason. It was a mix of personal relationships, special interest topics and professional networking. I’ve set up other accounts and tried to redirect my old followers to the new accounts, but once you get your mom following you on your professional account, it might be decades before you can convince them they’d rather follow you on your personal account.