Jesus, what's with all the followbots? Do I have to block these here too? I like clean numbers. Actual humans.
@annatarkov right?! I already feel somewhat violated.
@ant Apparently some are so that they can populate the timelines of remote instances that don't have many people on them.
@annatarkov I tooted (gonna take some time getting used to that term...) to a moderator about blocking or reporting them or what the process is. Fingers crossed!
@ant I don't think you have to do either though. You could just ignore them.
@annatarkov yes good point. I just didn't know how clean they were trying to keep things. Mastadon seems to rely more on community for stuff like that. Almost like a forum.
@ant No one is trying to "keep things" any one way I think. That's the point of a decentralized network.
@annatarkov yes, thats kind of nice and gives more of a true "community" feel as opposed to the pseudo-community feel of other networks... (cough) Twitter
@ant I have a community on Twitter too though. I've been there since 2008. I've cycled through more than one community at this point :)
@annatarkov i've been on Twitter since about then too. I've not been active since before the election last year. Too much hate & vitriol for my liking.
What brought you to Mastadon? Have you completely abandoned Twitter?
@ant I will unfortunately never be able to abandon Twitter unless the people I interact with there abandon it as well. What brought me here? Curiosity I guess. I tend to try these things out. I was on App.net, Ello, Peach. I like the idea of something decentralized. I like to get to know new people. Etc.
@annatarkov twitter used to be "social" for me. A nice break from daily whatever. A couple of employees looked at Mastodon so I though I'd check it out. I like interacting with people although I feel I should brush up on my French haha
@ant Yeah, why are there so many French people here?
@annatarkov lol, right?! Never has my linguistic ignorance been more evident than here on mastodon. Maybe the originator was French?
@ant For me Twitter has always been partially professional so I have to be there. I can't afford not to know what people in my area are talking about, that area having been media at one point and now games.
@annatarkov yeah, i keep up with some Twitch accounts there, fitness, health, nerd stuff. I've been able to keep it mostly separated from professional.
@ant I've never been able to separate personal and professional in any context so that includes social media 😁 Nor would I want to really.
@annatarkov what do you do professionally? Are you a workaholic? haha
@ant Haha, yes and no. And it's a hard question to answer. Look at my bio :) I have barriers to working, namely a special needs child. But in the past I was a journalist and now I co-host a podcast about mainly mobile games and also hopefully starting a consultancy soon for indie game developers.
@annatarkov you have a full plate for sure. A friend has an Autistic son. He's nonverbal but brings him to the gym and he enjoys working out with us. Working out has helped his son with coordination and motor skills. It gives dad a chance to get some exercise too :)
Games have come SOOO far since I was a kid w/ a Commodore 64 lol. I get some good indie titles on PS4 each month
@ant My son is non-verbal as well. But he's not old enough to do anything like that. We've only just started swimming lessons. We do lots of various therapies. OT is best for strength and coordination. But it's such slow going. Everything is. It's a huge mountain to climb.
@annatarkov yes, definitely a challenge to put it mildly. Knowing the amount of energy my friend and his wife have to have, I can sympathize and empathize with you. They have a good support system and that helps but seems like a drop in the bucket at times.
@ant That's exactly right. I struggle pretty hard tbh, even with a support system.
@annatarkov Many Followbots populate Federated timelines at remote instances. They're a utility service. You can block if you choose.
@dredmorbius I see that in some of their bios. I guess I'll keep those.
@dredmorbius @annatarkov I have mixed emotions regarding it, but I just block them, because as soon as I want to want something in private it would go to those bots.
@maloki @annatarkov I'd argue that Mastodon isn't the place for private convos.
@annatarkov @dredmorbius yes, but I don't mean private as "I think I'm fully protected" I mean private as in "only my followers", however since this doesn't translate outside of Mastodon network, that doesn't really work either.
@maloki @annatarkov Yes. @micahflee has a couple of very good toots on the whole privacy aspect here. TL;DR: most relies /heavily/ on trust. Better to assume none. Though you raise some interesting questions, especially about the difference between "who I choose to send to" vs. "who chooses to receive from me" which Mastodon doesn't facilitate.
@annatarkov I had to block about two of them. Lord knows how I'm going to react when I see a spambot on Mastodon.
@annatarkov I've seen multiple discussions about followbots now, apparently they're used to fill federated timelines, but the consensus seems to be that they're bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jemus42 I get it now and don't think they're bad necessarily. But many people don't understand and automatically hate bots. I get that too.
@annatarkov AFAIR the argument was primarily about filling the federated timeline of an instance with input from other instances users might not necessarily want to receive toots from, and I kind of get that too, I guess.
I'm really not sure how to handle these bots yet so as of now I'm just doing nothing about them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@annatarkov Did someone answer you?
@annatarkov beep boop