Disclaimer: I genuinely appreciate every new follower and every positive interaction on my posts. I'm also neurodivergent, which means I sometimes ...
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Great Breakdown!
Thanks, Art!
👍👍👍👍👍
Well i got a tell you @richardpascoe, I am not a active user of Dev.to but i am trying to make interactions, And one thing i found out most that now a days people usually dont care about the quality content instead what they do they ask for AI to step in their convo i mean AI is good but i believe often time we need to keep it humane and grow organically What do you think?
Indeed, Moiz, I am very careful to curate the material myself for this very reason. I'm not making a judgement either way - each to their own - but I want my words to be just that. Knowing time has been spent crafting a post in such a way is as good a reason as any to "interact" with it.
I always follow back, I always like posts, I always leave a comment if I see the "bell with the red label" in the upper right corner. I think notifications do too much that affects my activity. Lol, I came up with a new Dev Challenge: what if I block the notification icon with an ad blocker for 1 week?
Hrmm, that's an interesting idea, Ember. Main reason I don't have any social-type apps on my phone is the desire to check them for notifications, heh!
When someone follows me (in the notification if I see 682 people followed you, or 234 people followed you, then I don't manually check everyone from my dashboard, I see check the ones profiles are visible in notification), I first click on the pfp to go to their profile.
Then, if I see any post which has a cover or title that I found interesting, I prefer to read them a bit. If just based on what their profile looks like (active, has earned a lot of badges, write articles with topics I find cool) even without reading the articles, I get a positive impression, I immediately follow them back.
If just their profile don't impress me I start reading their 1 or 2 articles. If they get me hooked, I follow them back.
And one more thing, even if an account posts a lot, or engages a lot, if reading one or two articles give me the idea that the guy/girl just copies and pastes AI generated texts with or without review and publishes articles, I immediately move away from their profiles.
If I want to read AI texts I can do that myself. I don't need to subscribe a technical writer to read a bunch of AI'sh AI generated articles.
That's a great approach, Debajyati - thanks for sharing!
I completely agree: if the content feels obviously AI-generated, no amount of it will get me to hit the Follow Back button. The same goes for accounts that are clearly just promoting developer-related services.
yes, some profiles do clearly indicate they exist for only promotional stuff. They have no place in my followers list
I sometimes do the same, but only if I see at least one or two posts about things that interest me. I don't see the point in following someone just because they follow you.
I'd honestly prefer people only follow me if they're interested in what I have to say, not because I made a notification appear on their dashboard and they felt some kind of etiquette pressure.
Side note: DEV doesn't tell you when everyone follows you. It just picks up on odd people sometimes. I'm not sure what the criteria are!
I agree with you, Ben - 100%. Personally, more likely to follow back if you're active and posting something I am interested in.
Yea, I still have email notications enabled for a few things on DEV but probably only get told about a new follower once in every 200 followers or so!
Oh no, I'm afraid I fail that one 🤣
Me personally... when I write a popular article, sometimes I get 500 or so followers in a day. In that case it is extremely tedious to follow everyone back so I don't. But just in general, if I see a cool account I follow it, I don't care if they follow me back or not!
Thanks for the insight, BestCodes.
I woke up to another 150+ “followers” this morning, and you’re absolutely right - following everyone back just isn’t sustainable long term.
Are we all doomed to eventually have follower lists packed with gambling sites and sketchy online medication “services,” drowning out the people we’d actually want to connect with?
I always try to follow back, but sometimes on other platforms which have a wider topics i would like to follow back people with similar interest.
That's a good take, Niclas. As a fledging Pythonista - for example - I'm probably going to give those followers also using Python a second look!
I almost always follow back, unless it's obviously a troll/fake account - I mean, there's no harm in it, even when I don't really "gain" anything by following ...
I think that's a good way to look at it, leob. And, of course, if it's a placeholder account, there is often a period of no activity - so you can't tell if it's going to be used for spam content or not straight off the bat.
I'm defnitely new here so I don't know any dynamics yet but it makes a ton of sense to get rid of the bots and innactive accounts as such.
Thanks for the feedback, Daniel - appreciate it!
Seems like a logical thing to do. One time I got around 20+ followers at once out of nowhere and pretty much 99% of them are bots as far as I know. Thanks for sharing!
I know what you mean, Francis. As I am posting more, I often wake-up to an additional 100+ "followers" now. The majority remain spam accounts, of course.
This resonates a lot. I like how intentional and human your approach is — especially the emphasis on context over metrics. Following back doesn’t have to be transactional, and you’re very clear that this is about managing cognitive load, not gatekeeping :)
Your heuristics make sense to me. An avatar, a short bio, any sign of life is often enough to distinguish engagement from noise. That’s not about quality or seniority — it’s about knowing there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.
As audiences grow, I think many people drift into autopilot or stop thinking about follows altogether, mostly out of necessity. What I appreciate here is that you’re actively resisting that by staying reflective and transparent about why you do what you do. That kind of clarity is rare — and healthy — in community spaces