while I'm at asking noob questions: What is it with all those follow/federation bots that keep following me? Is this just technology made visible, or are they scanning me to determine if I'm a spammer?
@JollyOrc The federated timeline only shows people who have been followed by someone on your instance, so some instances have bots to try to crawl and follow everyone. (As far as I understand, anyway)
@JollyOrc I think so, yeah.
@kknowlton @JollyOrc Pretty much this. There's some conflict over whether or not they're good, or if synthetic propogation is a Good Thing. I'm looking for a good discussion or FAQ on the topic, though I haven't found one yet.
Upshot: mostly harmless, though they mean your "private" toots are that much less private, which is already not very private anyway.
@dredmorbius @kknowlton I gather though that if I block them, I'd be sorta more private again, right? (provided I trust the admins of the instances involved)
@kknowlton so basically, those bots try to expand the number of people to show in their respective federated timeline?