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I assume people leave a comment to say they followed and have probably automated it. All this will be recorded in the blockchain, so it's easy to analyse such behaviour. I got a load of 'follow spam' on Tsu, but I mostly ignored it. I value those who actually talk to me, but I still cannot follow them all.

yes i guess you can do that but it is an awful lot of effort just to get followers, they must have built a bot or something that comments after you follow but i havnt come across anything like that, im sure there will be something soon where you will have to buy it with steem dollars

It's not that hard to script this stuff. They are just likely to get flagged to oblivion.