Hello all. I almost never upload videos, but last night i did. Right after the upload, i started to get lots of new followers. Those followers had no contributions and were only following me. I found it odd and a tad suspicious.
Any info on why the flood of followers after a video post. And, why they have no contributions and only 1 person followed? I did block them all, fyi. Thx
You are not alone in this @StevenBerlin
Videos are normally displayed in the explore section of the area, so they capture more attentions than the photos that we usually upload in Maps.
In any case they are harmless, and I also have many followers who only follow me and have no contribution. I often remove them from the list too, but it is a useless operation since my profile is public, as is yours. Blocking them is of little use, since they can see what we publish even in incognito.
I’ve also had a lot of new followers recently Steven, but I didn’t suspect the connection that @ErmesT mentioned about videos. Although I do a few videos, most of my contributions are still photos.
If the person following me has no contributions, or contributions just promoting their own business, I delete them. If they are a lower level LG, I might wait a few weeks to see if they add anything more, then delete if they don’t.
On the other hand, if I’m happy with the new follower, I might also hit the Follow Back button and follow them as well.
@StevenBerlin I had a single short video suddenly get over 2 million views and was completely bewildered about the jump in follower count. It happens and I wouldn’t be suspicious about it.
Half of my followers are local guides. The remaining half are people who generally have no comment. Not everyone who follows on Google Maps comments. There is no rule such as having commented in order to follow.
Dieser Beitrag und die Antworten sind interessant und hilfreich, mir passiert es auch häufig @StevenBerlin wenn es mir nicht zu verdächtig erscheint lasse ich es dabei.
@SCJohnnyG and @Murat You’re probably correct, but “following” reminds me of social media, and as I don’t usually indulge in that, I react with suspicion when I see it show up here. If I can’t see what we have in common or how the person may have found me, I remove them.
But of course I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone who may be a bit more open minded than I am.
The person who starts following you may also be a business that you have made negative comments about. A business that I have made negative comments about is following me.
In my case, I have random people following me. A couple of my followers also seemingly liked my reviews on a couple of historical places. Not sure about the pattern but yeah seems to be random followers.
Hi Steve
I’m glad it’s not just me. I have had a few follow me but lately it’s increased a lot. I do remove followers who have hidden profiles. And yes a lot are guides and maybe 40% are just people who maybe saw one of my videos on Explore as @ErmesT mentioned.
I post about 5 videos a day, this may have something to do with it.
@TerryPG@ErmesT
So for me its very unusual and suspicious. I posted 1 video, and i have 13 new followers. Each almost the same thing. Zero contributions and each of them are following around 250 people. Very strange.
Steve , mine was vey similar recently 6 people not guides each were following about 250 guides. I did remove them, something wasn’t right.
I just checked your followers and recognized many of the same names.
More seriously, I find it disconcerting too, especially when they are only following me. I mean, my profile is public, they don’t need to follow me to know what I publish in Google Maps
Oh yes, @WilfriedB , too late.
I think the AI generated post explaining how the future of Google Maps is to be a social media, where you can engage with other local guides on their reviews (basically transforming them in a chat) and with an AI generated cover photo plenty of copyrighted logos was “erased” from Connect. I wonder why .
But a lot of people think in this way, they put a selfie (or a lot of) on the location to say “I have been here”, to say “I am cool”.
They follow you with the hope of being followed back, they use the AI to write reviews.
I think this could be the subject of another interesting topic.
Let me think about it
Since I didn’t post a single video yet and don’t have an intention to do so, I cannot confirm your observation, but some thoughts:
To me it sounds like the mentality of people permanently watching TV. You don’t read or search by yourself, but consume whatever the TV offers. Being a follower, feeds the same expectation: wait for anything the followed person offers to you. Possibly, they are not really aware what they are following.
As I said, just a thought from the “anti-video-guy” @TerryPG@StevenBerlin