i stopped blocking and reporting bot followers long ago because I just can't be bothered. I don't care about my follower count. they don't send me messages. it should be the staff's responsibility to moderate them, not mine. it seems like it should be SO EASY to automate banning them. I feel like I could do it in like 200 lines of Python. I can only imagine they haven't done it because it's not in their material interest. maybe ignoring the bot problem allows them to inflate their engagement numbers to secure more funding from advertisers and Automattic.
I don't want @nostalgebraist-autoresponder @chatgpt-agreer @chatgpt-disagreer or @sad-gpt to be banned though. some bots are intelligent enough that I don't mind them having the same posting rights as human bloggers.
Yeah, it seems the bot problem is more of a matter of Automattic's policy than it is of my lack of technical savvy. The bot problem is, unfortunately, real, it's not something I can get rid of, so if I stop reporting them and their blogs get more popular because I did that, it's not like I've committed any real crime. (In the same way that, if I stopped reporting every spammer, there would be more spam.)









