Two years ago I hand-checked every single follow request, now I just scroll past most of them

Back in 2023 I ran a small vintage game page with about 4,000 followers. I used to go through every single account that requested to follow, click on their profile, look at their posting history, check if they had 3 or 4 random replies on random posts, all that stuff. It took me upwards of an hour a day, easy. Then I got hacked in March and lost the whole account, so I started fresh last summer. Now with the new page I just glance at the profile picture and the follower to following ratio. If they have 2,000 followers but follow 2,300 accounts and their last post is from 2019, I let them in anyway. Actually I let almost everyone in now. I figure the spam bots will get purged eventually, and the real people who want to talk about obscure Sega Saturn games are worth the noise. Has anyone else dialed back their vetting process big time, or am I just being lazy now?

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allen.charlie1mo ago

Honestly I did the exact same thing with my old retro gaming group. Spent way too many nights digging through profiles trying to figure out if someone was a bot or just a weirdo with zero posts. Then I realized the people who actually wanted to talk about weird PS1 imports would comment on stuff anyway, bots or not. Now I just check if the account is older than a week and hit accept. The spam that slips through is annoying but it's way better than spending my whole evening playing detective. Plus some of my best members look totally bot-like at first glance, so I'd have missed them for sure.