I noticed these accounts are following a lot of ppl on Spotify including me nd it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one from looking on social media. Does anyone have an answer to this? Bots maybe, ppl spam following?
one of the following:
- attention seeker
- scraper bot
to elaborate, this is a old facebook trick. You get a friend request from some hot looking girl and you accept cuz you are horny and in your 20’s and it says they are actually already friends with your pal Dave! they even chat with you a little bit sometimes, very blandly and generically…
but now they can see all of your friends, posts you have set to friends only, etc. It’s a wedge to bypass the host services privacy settings and nothing more. Those accounts can see things that google can’t see and there’s money in them there profiles. They use the fact that they are now friends with you AND Dave to more easily target people you both know and the botnet grows.
Damn… I never even considered that being a thing but it makes so much sense hearing it.
There are multiple copies of them too it seems because the ones that are following me have slightly different display names
The two (also slightly different names) I see on my Spotify have a “Viral songs on tiktok” playlist in their profile. So it’s probably a way to spread/spam songs around?
I checked after seeing this post. Same for me. They had a slightly different names
Most likely bots for either data analysis or playlist generation.
… you can follow people on Spotify?
Yup
What does it do? Do you like… see what they’re playing? You listen along or something?
Not a lot. Yes you can see what they are playing and they use it to make recommendations for you.
I think the primary motivator for Spotify is just data scraping. Everybody wants to know your circle of friends in order to advertise better towards you.
I don’t know if it’s still a feature but I used to get phone notifications every time a friend put a song on.
I don’t recommend this.
But I remember we did it. “Okay, Brian, the record’s five. The record’s five… Okay ready? Go!”
For me, I follow several artists and it gives updates on when they uploaded a new album etc etc And I follow my siblings and could see what they’re listening to, live, if I activated the sidebar but I’m just here to listen to music
That first part works without following personal accounts too. I don’t follow anyone but I get notified when the bands I listen to release new albums. Besides that, I use the release radar playlist.
Yep, you can see what song they’re playing if you follow each other. Not sure if it does anything else
I didn’t even know people could follow me on Spotify. These two were the only ones.
Same
My question with all this is why hasn’t everyone switched this off in the settings from the first moment they made an account?
It’s no wonder we’ve become a commodity to the services we use, people just allow it to happen.
Switched what off? I have my settings about as private as I can do, yet one of those accounts had followed me without me knowing. I blocked them now but I’m not sure what setting you’re referring to, in order to prevent some random bot from following you on Spotify?
You can follow people on Spotify?
They would have to follow 44 people a day for 6 years straight to reach 98,000
If they follow 98,000 people per day, it would take one day
And if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bicycle
But… I’m not a big fan of bicycles…
I’m a big fan of your grandmother.
Thanks :)
is there a limit of how many people they can follow in a day? Why not 500?
It does not seem so
Literally noticed this last night on my Spotify
One of them is following me, but with a bunch of extra spaces after the exclamation point.
I don’t usually check my followers, but I happened to be in there a couple days ago. The only person following me then was my wife, so this bot/spam is relatively new.
Wtf me too - the Lucas one plus all the spaces. I never even really use Spotify. Creepy.
Edit they are literally my only follower aside from one single friend I know irl.
Could possibly be OF bots. You reddit users, remember the bots that would follow you every week or so and had to disable following?
Wow, thanks. They were following me too, and I had no idea. Blocked.
You just lost your biggest fan… Probably… Not
Same
Wouldn’t it mean they have 98k followers? Not that they follow 98k users? Bad UI?
It doesn’t show how many they follow, but it’s probably in the millions
They’re
a. Fascinated with your content and commentary
b. Bots
Thanks, blocked.
