Followers Don’t Mean Anything On Medium — It’s Only Bots
true or false?
Bots are a type of software that automates your interactions across a platform. Depending on the type of bot, 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…
“gain a more accurate sense of your audience size now that follower counts only contain authentic, quality users”
Still, a definition of what a spam account is or how these accounts were discovered might have been useful to clarify questions for us writers, don’t you think?
It would have been interesting to hear how Medium determines who’s authentic and who is not.
Moreover, a lot of writers wondered whether this move will be good or bad for the future of this platform.
Nevertheless, due to the purge of fake accounts, the follower count of one of Medium’s biggest publications called ILLUMINATION (the one I wrote this piece for) went down from 98K to only 35k.
Sheesh. Some pubs even lost 100k fake followers.
Why writers lost thousands of followers overnight
Hundreds of writers realized they had a lot of bots following them when they experienced some of their followers just went poof — Ouch!
As far as I’m concerned, in June 2021, I noticed a drop in my follower count too.
I ‘lost’ around 30 bot followers — the good thing about not having too many followers and bots who don’t like my writing. LOL.
Here’s my viral short form piece for further information:
There are still bots on this platform
Unfortunately, although Medium wants to make this platform truly relational, there are several recent examples that show that there are still fake accounts on this platform and our follower base isn’t 100% authentic.
When Barack Obama, Tim Denning, or Jessica Wildfire follow you or leave a comment, be skeptical.
Instead of getting excited, check whether it’s a fake account.
Here’s more about scammers on Medium:
Even 100% read ratio is fake
Yesterday, I published an article about my latest post with a 100% read ratio and how to gain this rare achievement.
As feedback, a fellow writer friend sent me a link to an article claiming that a 100% read ratio is fake.
It’s due to crawler bots.
As with everything useful, there are fake web crawlers that pay your pages a visit, and count as views and reads when they’re just an algorithm — a useless one at that — visiting your pages. The Maverick Files
Well, as Maverick, the author of this article states:
(…)I learned quite early in life that bitter truths are much more useful than sugarcoated lies. (…) 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.
I have 15 articles with a 100% read ratio. Is this good or bad? Does this mean these bots like my writing?
I promise I will investigate Maverick’s revelation in another article.
Final Takeaways
I’m happy for a good clean-out to get rid of spam.
For me, it was a relief when Medium announced in June 2021 they will purge fake accounts and bots.
It’s best that this wonderful social media platform is kept as clean as possible.
I thought it was a great move because what is the point of these followers, if not even 1% read your article published.
Fortunately, Medium announced:
We will continue removing spam and other disingenuous accounts from Medium on a daily basis, as well as accurately reflecting your unfollow actions. Medium Staff
Yes, Medium! Keep on clearing out the garbage and keep the real people reading and writing.
What do you think about the purge of fake accounts and bots?
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