Three Fail-Safe Ways to Identify Bots That are Following You
They lower our read ratios meaning we earn less. Here’s How to ‘Spot a bot'
I’m going to preface this by saying, that when it comes down to what affects how much money you earn on Medium, coming second only to the amount of member reads you rack up, is your read/view ratio.
The algorithm looks kindly on a ratio of 80% and above and, for my first few months on Medium — Aug-Dec 2023 —I couldn’t complain, as that’s where mine were, a lot of the time at least.
2024 began with an influx of AI blogs and content, seeing my ratio plummet regularly to around 50% and taking my earnings with it.
Thankfully Medium have been on top of this recently, if you noticed your follower count go down--mine has decreased by 55 in March so far — this was why. Thankfully your read ratio will have improved.
The reason for this, is the AI bloggers aren’t here to read your content, they copy and paste posts from AI engines such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, then fake phoney engagement by leaving us some claps and highlighting a paragraph or two.
Here’s how to Spot them and block the one’s that have managed to escape the Medium cull:
There’s three main tell tale signs, and frankly, one out of three is enough for me to press block. So here we are:
A large amount of followers/following in a short amount of time. If it looks too much too quick, so a good rule of thumb is it’s near on impossible to consistently amass 1000 followers per month, they do because they follow many other AI blogs and are followed back by them.
Consistently posting more than once daily. And this is my ‘Bingo’ you’re looking at a bot dead giveaway! It is pretty tough to post even one decent, two minute read seven days per week. These fools are putting out three, four, I’ve even seen ten and eleven posts per day! Not happening. Block!
Ridiculously over the top comments. Something like: your story on why sausages taste nice has given me a deeper appreciation, and a fuller understanding of the culinary habits and dietary requirements of white males aged 30 and over.
You see this stuff then get rid, honestly, do yourself, your read ratio and your bank balance a favour.
Happy blocking.
