Follower Count

đź”— | by Chris McLeod

For the last 2-3 months I’ve been running an experiment on my use of social media. I wanted to see what works best for me now, compared to assumptions I’ve carried for the last few years. For the last several years (since around 2017 or so…) I’ve been conservative on the number of accounts I follow on any given platform. “Carefully curated”, you might say. Mainly this was so I didn’t feel overwhelmed trying to keep up with every update in a busy feed. As the social media landscape got progressively worse, it seemed a prescient choice. It’s worked well for me, but it’s always good to see if another way could be better. The rise of Bluesky gave me the opportunity to try something different.

  • On Mastodon, I kept to my usual “follow only select accounts you know and enjoy, adding new follows rarely” approach.
  • Meanwhile, over on Bluesky, I threw some of that caution to the wind and followed with wild abandon[1], using Starter Packs for subjects I enjoy to give me a head-start. I was still reviewing these starter packs and their creator, so I wasn’t following accounts completely blind, but I wasn’t being cautious with the number of accounts I followed.

As it stands, I follow ~150 accounts on Mastodon, and ~900 on Bluesky. I also follow some tags on Mastodon, so that adds a little bit extra variety on top.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that on these no/less alorithm-driven platforms I prefer following more accounts, though I could probably trim the Bluesky number down a bit. The higher follower count just makes for a much more varied and lively feed, which feels more enjoyable. After a bit of adjustment, don’t feel the need anymore to read every update I might have missed. I just dip in and absorb what’s there in the moment, then dip out. Custom feeds such as “Quiet Posters” help too. On Mastodon I see most updates from those I follow, as the numbers are relatively low, but it’s easy for the feed to be dominated by 1 particular account or topic at a time, and this doesn’t feel great - particularly at the moment.

So, I guess I need to start ramping up my following activity on the fediverse. There currently aren’t fully integrated starter packs to make that easier - though there are proposals and 3rd-party tools out there to change that - so for now I’ll have to do that the old fashioned way: discovery and recommendations. Hint, hint.

  1. I still don’t do the automatic follow back thing though. That’s how you get disinfo campaigns. ↩︎