On mastodon, I’m starting to be followed by accounts I have no relationship with at all (a famous guy I doubt would ever follow me, a supposed magazine about a subject I never talked about and with a name not really related to the subject of their posts…).
Is this a trend? Is it a strategy to get people to follow them back so they have more followers? Is this the fediverse version of spam?
I think it’s a symptom of new people joining the platform without really understanding exactly how following people and following hashtags on mastodon is different than how it worked on Twitter or Instagram. I wouldn’t immediately suspect anything nefarious.