Disclaimer: I genuinely appreciate every new follower and every positive interaction on my posts. I'm also neurodivergent, which means I sometimes default to "follow back first, think later" if there aren't any immediate red flags.
This morning, I tried a different approach: I spent about an hour reviewing and trimming my following list. It wasn't about calling anyone out or setting rules - just me reflecting on my connections and how I manage things in a way that works for my brain.
I joined DEV mainly to document my learning journey and stay consistent, and what surprised me most was how much interaction this would generate. It has been really rewarding and shows me that - by and large - the DEV community is fantastic.
How I decide whether to follow someone back
When someone follows me, I usually glance at their profile. I don't expect polish or lots of activity, but I tend to follow (or keep following) if there's at least one signal that gives me context, like:
- An avatar or photograph - just something that signals a real person.
- A short bio (even a sentence helps).
- Links such as GitHub or a personal site.
- Any history of posts or comments on DEV.
These small details help me tell the difference between inactive accounts, bots, or placeholders versus people who are actually engaging with the community.
This is just what I do to stay intentional with my follows - not advice, not a standard, and definitely not a judgment.
Question for more established DEV members
If you’re a long-time or popular poster:
- Do you follow everyone back automatically?
- Do you have personal heuristics?
- Or do you stop thinking about follows once your audience grows?
I'd love to hear how others - especially folks with larger followings - handle this.
Top comments (23)
Great Breakdown!
Thanks, Art!
👍👍👍👍👍
Well i got a tell you @richardpascoe, I am not a active user of Dev.to but i am trying to make interactions, And one thing i found out most that now a days people usually dont care about the quality content instead what they do they ask for AI to step in their convo i mean AI is good but i believe often time we need to keep it humane and grow organically What do you think?
Indeed, Moiz, I am very careful to curate the material myself for this very reason. I'm not making a judgement either way - each to their own - but I want my words to be just that. Knowing time has been spent crafting a post in such a way is as good a reason as any to "interact" with it.
I always follow back, I always like posts, I always leave a comment if I see the "bell with the red label" in the upper right corner. I think notifications do too much that affects my activity. Lol, I came up with a new Dev Challenge: what if I block the notification icon with an ad blocker for 1 week?
Hrmm, that's an interesting idea, Ember. Main reason I don't have any social-type apps on my phone is the desire to check them for notifications, heh!
When someone follows me (in the notification if I see 682 people followed you, or 234 people followed you, then I don't manually check everyone from my dashboard, I see check the ones profiles are visible in notification), I first click on the pfp to go to their profile.
Then, if I see any post which has a cover or title that I found interesting, I prefer to read them a bit. If just based on what their profile looks like (active, has earned a lot of badges, write articles with topics I find cool) even without reading the articles, I get a positive impression, I immediately follow them back.
If just their profile don't impress me I start reading their 1 or 2 articles. If they get me hooked, I follow them back.
And one more thing, even if an account posts a lot, or engages a lot, if reading one or two articles give me the idea that the guy/girl just copies and pastes AI generated texts with or without review and publishes articles, I immediately move away from their profiles.
If I want to read AI texts I can do that myself. I don't need to subscribe a technical writer to read a bunch of AI'sh AI generated articles.
That's a great approach, Debajyati - thanks for sharing!
I completely agree: if the content feels obviously AI-generated, no amount of it will get me to hit the Follow Back button. The same goes for accounts that are clearly just promoting developer-related services.
yes, some profiles do clearly indicate they exist for only promotional stuff. They have no place in my followers list
I sometimes do the same, but only if I see at least one or two posts about things that interest me. I don't see the point in following someone just because they follow you.
I'd honestly prefer people only follow me if they're interested in what I have to say, not because I made a notification appear on their dashboard and they felt some kind of etiquette pressure.
Side note: DEV doesn't tell you when everyone follows you. It just picks up on odd people sometimes. I'm not sure what the criteria are!
I agree with you, Ben - 100%. Personally, more likely to follow back if you're active and posting something I am interested in.
Yea, I still have email notications enabled for a few things on DEV but probably only get told about a new follower once in every 200 followers or so!
Oh no, I'm afraid I fail that one 🤣
Me personally... when I write a popular article, sometimes I get 500 or so followers in a day. In that case it is extremely tedious to follow everyone back so I don't. But just in general, if I see a cool account I follow it, I don't care if they follow me back or not!
Thanks for the insight, BestCodes.
I woke up to another 150+ “followers” this morning, and you’re absolutely right - following everyone back just isn’t sustainable long term.
Are we all doomed to eventually have follower lists packed with gambling sites and sketchy online medication “services,” drowning out the people we’d actually want to connect with?
I always try to follow back, but sometimes on other platforms which have a wider topics i would like to follow back people with similar interest.
That's a good take, Niclas. As a fledging Pythonista - for example - I'm probably going to give those followers also using Python a second look!
I almost always follow back, unless it's obviously a troll/fake account - I mean, there's no harm in it, even when I don't really "gain" anything by following ...
I think that's a good way to look at it, leob. And, of course, if it's a placeholder account, there is often a period of no activity - so you can't tell if it's going to be used for spam content or not straight off the bat.
I'm defnitely new here so I don't know any dynamics yet but it makes a ton of sense to get rid of the bots and innactive accounts as such.
Thanks for the feedback, Daniel - appreciate it!
Seems like a logical thing to do. One time I got around 20+ followers at once out of nowhere and pretty much 99% of them are bots as far as I know. Thanks for sharing!
I know what you mean, Francis. As I am posting more, I often wake-up to an additional 100+ "followers" now. The majority remain spam accounts, of course.