Dear New Writers, Watch Out For Bots
No matter what you do. They keep coming back

Bots are a type of software that automates your interactions across a platform.
(…)they can like posts, make comments, answer polls, send direct messages, and follow new profiles. dmagazine
In June, the Medium team announced fake accounts and bots would be tossed overboard to make this platform truly relational.
I thought it was a great move because what is the point of these followers if not even 1% read your articles.
Due to the purge of fake accounts, some pubs even lost 100k fake followers.
Hundreds of writers realized a drop in their followers too. Apparently, the bots liked them. 😂
Unfortunately, there are still bots on this platform.
The title of this post is inspired by Patricia Haddock who commented the following on my latest article about bots on Medium:

Well, as Patricia said ‘bots are like ants at a picnic. No matter what you do. They keep coming back.’ LOL. 😂
Watch out for scammers
When Top Writers such as Barack Obama, Tim Denning, Tom Kuegler, or Jessica Wildfire follow you or leave a comment, be skeptical.
Check whether it’s a fake account.
- Does the account has followers?
- Does the account has content?
Tom Kuegler and Co. have thousands of followers and a library full of content.
How to use the reporting tools?
If you suspect an account of spam (or other rules violations, for instance, bullying or cryptocurrency offerings) click the three dots on the bottom of an article or comment and use your reporting tools.

You can always report, mute to block an author.
My recommendation is to flag a fake account to Medium in order to help the team.
They will take a look at it.
Do you really think people read your content?
You can check the stats of every piece you’ve published so far by clicking on your profile and select ‘Stats’ as shown below.

You can see:
- views
- reads
- read ratio
The latter shows how many people actually read your text from the beginning to the end.
For instance, a 5% read ratio is very low.
A 100% read ratio is the best you can get. Here’s an example.

According to The Maverick Files a 100% read ratio is fake. It’s due to crawler bots.
This is the internet — the place of the scroller with minimal attention spans — there’s no way EVERY SINGLE person that viewed your article loved it so much that they read the whole of it.
What a bummer…
Final Thoughts
As Patricia commented on my latest post, we can’t get rid of bots.
They keep coming like ants to a picnic.
What we can do is help Medium to keep this social media platform as clean as possible.
Report fake accounts with your reporting tools.
Dear new writers, what do you think about the purge of fake accounts?
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