So, what is a followbot? It certainly seems as if they're bad, but I'm not really sure what they do or the purpose they're supposed to serve
@mallaidh Mostly automated egoboos when you look at the your follower count as a measure of self-worth. Overal, mostly a waste of bandwidth that only add noise instead of value to anyone's life.
@dmoonfire @mallaidh @Jamjars
@zacanger
zac's answer is correct. basically, the only way for a user (say mr. moonfire) to show up in a different mastodon instance is for someone from that instance to follow him. then, the new instance knows to look for messages from him and drop them into the federated timeline.
automatic followbots are combing around, linking people to instances. it's not for bumping up people's follow counts.
