@Laurelai It is jarring to have some automated thing follow my account, because I don't know why it did, and the explanation isn't clear, especially for new users (which are the target of this kind of activity). I already had one friend freak out after trying to get her over here from Twitter because of shit like this that wasn't simple to explain.

@odinsdream Well i get that its jarring. You can put #nobot in your profile and the bots wont follow you. However because of the way federation works between instances its really hard for new instances to get federated. That means either spending massive amounts of time or using a federation bot. Its kind of a shitty situation all around.

@drequivalent I honestly do not understand? Please explain if you feel up for it. Why is it useful for a bot to auto-follow someone?

@odinsdream It gets one instance acquainted with another.
Fediverse, as the name suggests, is the federated network. Instanes send each other messages to form one large entity. To send a message, one instance must know the other. That's what populates your Federated Timeline and delivers mentions.
On idle, an instance makes no attempt to know other instances in the network. The instance finds out about another instance only if the user from that instance subscribes to the user of another one.

@drequivalent Okay, thanks for explaining. So, once this bot from Server A follows a user from Server B, then Server B's federated timeline sees all of Server A's or just the user it followed from Server A?

And thank you for explaining, I'm seriously not arguing or looking for a fight about this. And I had no clue about #nobot being a thing. Where is that ever discussed? Is that an honor system thing?

@odinsdream Exactly.
I don't know where it is discussed, it's just the logic of the network. Followbots are just here to automate the process, nothing more.

@odinsdream So, in order to make your instance known to other instances, people from your instance must follow as many people from as many instances as possible. The more instances know each other, the more cohesive and transparent the whole network will be.

@drequivalent this is still not really making any sense to me. but thanks for explaining. and i still don't think followbots as implemented are user-friendly at all.

@odinsdream Oi, on design - would be awesome to see it as Elementary-style app. Try and read this, it may turn out useful
https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines

@drequivalent tabbed for later reading. thx.

@odinsdream Ha sorry. Wrong mention

@odinsdream It was for the guy writing Mastodon client

@drequivalent that was me. also not a guy.

@odinsdream That was for @tindall You are writing a client too?

@drequivalent @tindall yuppers mcyupperface

@odinsdream @tindall What platform/toolkit?

@taiQuinn see what I'm talking about. Let federation happen, don't force it.