Hey y'all. Does the follower count matter to you ? And do you use it as a measurement of how trustworthy someone is here on Mastodon?
I'm just curious. I know I can look it up but I like having additional source of info.
Boosts aren't mandatory but appreciated. Besides I'll make my own conclusions eventually...
@altlazybear kind of?
Like, I don't really care about the difference between a few dozen and a few thousand. But very few or no followers suggests a spam bot.
@jetlagjen @altlazybear same here. I actually don’t engage much with people that have thousands of followers, it’s usually less personal at that point anyway. Talking into the void kind of thing.
How do you distinguish a new user or a "not really active user" from a bot ?
@stethewwolf @altlazybear through all the other clues available.
Number and content of posts and replies, how I came to interact with them, completeness of profile...
Oct 15, 2026, 2:50 PM@altlazybear I take follower count as an indicator of trustworthiness on any social media, but perhaps not as you may have intended. The vast majority of accounts with a large number of followers spread misinformation so I usually avoid them.
@altlazybear cannot answer without revealing ingredient of the secret sauce I use to approve follow requests
Oct 15, 2026, 3:03 PM@altlazybear I don't think trustworthy is an applicable dimension for me most of the time. (Factual information should come with a source and/or I actually know the person and their credentials.)
I tend to stay away from accounts with >~1k followed because it starts to feel like commenting on a broadcast medium and not human interaction at that point. And I try to give accounts with <~10 followers the benefit of the doubt but will be quicker to disengage from them if it's not feeling fullfiling.
What I do often glance at, however, is the ratio of replies to boosts to original toots; phanpy helpfully displays this. I'm looking for thoughtful conversation. For that a balance of toots and replies with a sprinkle of boosts seems to often be a good sign.
@altlazybear They don't mean much to me. I am wary of people with high follower accounts who follow very few. Some balance is nice.
Oct 15, 2026, 4:18 PM@altlazybear I usually trust my gut. Who is following someone is usually a better gauge than a number of followers. I also look at things like age of account, how many people they are following, and some of their general engagement (Posts and replies).
Oct 15, 2026, 4:57 PM@altlazybear "it's complicated" to the first question, no to the second
as in, follower count is less important as an isolated stat than it is in relation to follow count. specifically how far apart they are. but also, if both are off in the high four figures or more, i'm likely to take that as an indication that they don't necessarily value mutuality
@altlazybear@mas.to I don't even exactly know how many followers I have
@altlazybear I look at follow count when deciding if I should approve a follow but that's it
And it's not a case of "more is better " but more "someone following a lot of people but with little followers themselves is probably a bot or a scam"
@altlazybear
I only notice follower count if it is very low. Otherwise I feel I can follow anyone and then unfollow if I find I don't want them on my timeline. I spend very little time getting, perhaps reading 2 or 3 posts. And even that is likely only for low follower accounts.
Oct 16, 2026, 4:27 AM@altlazybear at a certain point I started getting recommended on the mastodon dot social "recommended accounts" feed that new accounts are shown when signing up. And once that happened my follows *skyrocketed*, and kept skyrocketing, and I'm just about certain 9 out of 10 of my followers past…I dunno, maybe 15,000, have been spam bots. I block the obvious ones but there's so many and the template for a parked spam bot looks a lot like a low-interest user who signs up & only posts once. By design
Oct 16, 2026, 4:28 AM@altlazybear which is a way of saying no I don't trust follower counts because I've seen just how easy they are to inflate on fedi
Oct 17, 2026, 3:34 AM@altlazybear The only thing I, personally, find the follower count useful for is, if it's *zero*, that's a sign that the account may be a spambot. Not conclusive by itself, but enough to warrant closer investigation.