Hey, as a newcomer on dev.to, my articles may not receive many views, but my follower count is rapidly growing (without additional views).
When I created my account, after my first article, I was gaining almost 10 followers per hour, compared to 1 or 2 views per hour on the first article (since then I've written others 😝).
So let's summarize:
In 1 hour -> 10 followers
-------> 1 view on the only articleThe only possible solution: bots
Now let's take a look at some of these followers:
And I could add several dozen more,
Each time it's a profile with a description/advertisement, almost never any articles (unless it's an advertisement article), and a link to the website and social media.
But I also have the impression that there's a second type of bot,
These bots appear normal, with a random profile picture, often registering on the same day. And after a certain time, they change all their information to become 100% advertisement profiles. Probably to bypass dev.to moderators.
Conclusion:
Let me know if you're also in this situation. I find it quite disturbing not to know how many people are truly following us!
It would be easy to limit this by preventing the inclusion of URLs in profiles until a certain number of articles have been written. 👽
don't forget to follow me and like the post if you are not a bot 🤣👽
Top comments (8)
This is a recent development, see the comments to my post. I'm still not sure what's the cause but I get an average of 50 followers per day when it used to be more of a drip. I feel it does impact readership but it's hard to tell.
Yes, I have several new followers every day who are not bots.
However, I also have many online casino bots and suspicious website bots following me daily.
I've noticed this too - at least 10-15 new followers every day. All look suspiciously bot-like and have signed up that day.
Many, many things seem to be going downhill on the site. On the plus side, there does appear to be less content that is obviously AI generated now... but the general standard of content is still falling and there's a lot of spam content getting through.
So, you're experiencing the same issue as me 😒
With the number of posts and new users every day, I believe it's challenging to moderate everything 100%. There should be keyword alert systems or AI analysis in place to determine whether a post/account is relevant or just spam/bot-generated 🤖.
I have the same impression.
Yup pretty much all my followers are bots/spam.
Thank you for your comment! It's quite annoying, solutions should be found. 😕
Just now, when i publish the post 🤣:
