Occasionally I wind up (or at least I assume this is happening) on the Mastodon.social list of accounts that get recommended to new signups, so I get long streams of 0-follower accounts following me in bunches over a week or two. I need like… some kind of UI/app/script that monitors those & tells me when they start posting. So I know which ones just parked an account & never posted, which started posting normal after a week, and which sat gathering followers for 8 days then started posting spam.
If spam accounts are following me in order to simulate "authentic behavior" then I want to deny them that simultation!! I block spambot followers when I realize I have them but spammers have wised up and now wait a few days between account creation and spam kickoff
On a related note maybe I should add a "if you have an AI generated profile or header image, I will block you" to my profile. Like I can just go ahead and block those folks anyway, but if they don't *know* why they got blocked then it may not lead to a change in behavior
@mcc I spent a lot of time star-fishing on Twitter and Facebook, trying to get people to change their behavior.
I'm not sure it's useful. It may be the case that you're not here to change their behavior so blocking without explanation is fine and if they want your wisdom they can do the bare minimum work of, like, reading your profile or something.
(I mean, unless you are here to change their behavior; not telling you what to do. "I'm a shitposter, not a cop." )
@mark I am not familiar with the term "star-fishing" actually
@mcc One second, let me find a link.
tl;dr a fiction about someone throwing individual starfish back into the ocean when they wash up on a beach.