I recently made a mastodon account after deleting mine about six months ago. Joining Lemmy has made me curious about what I left behind.
Do you enable require follow requests?
I used to be pretty permissive, but the people I admired had that turned on. I turned it on for my new account the moment I thought to ask this question.
Are there upside or downsides to this? Please share any thoughts I want to know if it even matters.
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I don’t share (or like) anything that I don’t want made public, so I don’t mind who follows my profiles on social media. But some people would rather keep a lower profile or be more selective of who can interact with them, so it’s better to have the option available.
It’s hard enough already to get followers and SEE content from people you follow. Making a request to follow someone makes it even worse in my opinion.
On Mastodon, yes. I think I could turn it off now. There was a time just a few months ago when there was a wave of spam accounts following people. Some were legit but they landed on Fedi during one of the Twitter migrations and just started following everyone but posting no content so I began using request to follow.
I think I will leave it on. I am not too happy with the instance I chose, so I may look to migrate. I think the instance itself strives to be cozy and active, but there is one guy who goes off about U.S. politics constantly like he is on a manic episode, and I had to mute him. Yet, the local timeline is just not that active or interesting.
You know what, I thought about what I posted, and I am going to stay on my instance. I joined it because I think the name is cool and I like the logo.
Also, the admin welcomed me, and I would feel like a massive dysfunctional dick if I left. So, I will stick with it, focus on the federated timeline, and maybe join the patreon if there is on.
I run a GoToSocial instance and have it on, not so much because I don’t want to allow people to follow me (so far I think I’ve approved all requests) but because having it off means that a bot can easily get to my followers-only posts and archive or distribute them, and some iffy instances have been doing that in order to build search engines and the like.
I have on my mastodon account, simply due to me wanting to be able to see whos interested in what I have to say. Its easy enough as well, you get a push and press yes, dont see a reason not to activate it. For Lemmy, no not yet, doesn’t really seem as relevant for some reason.
That is a good point. I think given how personal microblogging can get, it is wise to be mindful of who you let monitor you, even when it is public.
Also, it is a way to really connect with people who took an interest in you, it is an invitation.
