A spot on post as usual from you. I would also say while there is a lot of spam, I lived for two years in basically a community mostly made up of people from India and that part of the world. Their culture is very different, and some of what is thought of as spam is indeed just culture and language barriers as already mentioned. It took me some getting used to when I first lived with them, as I thought they were fake (no one is that polite). Now that I am away from them, I miss their genuine respect and politeness.
As to the follow for follow, I had one on my post earlier today, and she even was offering an upvote if I followed her. I politely declined, lol. That was definitely a spam comment.
Yeah, I feel kind of bad (I have seen people call out users for using Sir, Miss, etc) and its basically a cultural difference that gets taken the wrong way. I think that in some parts of the world we are far less formal, honestly, if someone calls me ma'am or Miss I am always slightly uncomfortable with it, haha (its only happened a couple of times, maybe thats why!) Yeah, in the beginning I did actually follow the people who asked me to because I felt bad. I dont anymore, lol.