@beadsland @nev I blocked it. I didn't know WTF was happening & it weirded me out. I don't have a personal need to be boosted by bots.
Ah, okay, tags.pub.
It's a service that allows folk to follow a hashtag by following an account that is named the same. (Not all fediverse software necessarily provides for hashtag following. Even mastodon borks this functionality by limiting how many one can readily follow.)
They harvest tags from relays, these being servers that help less prominent nodes in the fediverse get seen.
So, all it would take would be someone who boosts your posts (even if they don't follow you) being on a server that participates in a relay that tags.pub subscribes to. All hashtags it sees automatically become automated accounts.
They say you can opt out by including a hashtag in your profile. Is probably simpler to just block their whole server.
@PhoenixSerenity @evan for your troubleshooting, apparently your tags.pub bots are boosting everyone's hashtags now, regardless of opt-in.
@mayintoronto @evan Yeah - I don't follow it so am annoyed by my notifications feed being clogged up by bots.
@PhoenixSerenity Yeah, that's how the system works, but it's not supposed to be doing this if you're not following the main account at https://tags.pub/profile/_followback
@mayintoronto @evan Multiple hashtag bot accounts keep doing same thing.
@nev they're almost all from tag.pub
I don't really know how bot reboosting accounts here work & am getting weirded out by some new bots reboosting accounts that are seemingly only boosting my posts. I don't understand why it's happening. I don't know who is running those bot accounts. I feel kinda creeped out.
@katzentratschen @MeierSchulze @Kuestentroete @necrosis Danke, gute Idee.
@wendinoakland Thanks, noted!