#FediTips How to spot a #troll on #mastodon
Did someone post an inappropriate, rude, weird, asinine question/comment? Before replying, check their profile. They are likely a troll if they:
-Have no bio or pinned #introduction
-Have fewer than 100 followers
-On a small or inappropriately named instance
-“Posts and replies” shows they do the same thing to other people
Report and block if necessary.
Feel free to add comments below for more tips. #trolls #trolling
@jblue Where does the number 100 come from? I also think that instance local feed content matters more than instance size. People host instances for themselves and friends. Or local instances, or instances based around a rare topic.
@vegan thanks for your reply. I picked fewer than 100 bc I noticed when reporting racist/transphobic/etc posts, the accounts all had between 2-30 followers. Also another thing I noticed is that those accounts also had been set up recently (within the past week).
Agreed that there can be good small instances. Just saying it’s an indicator if you look at all the evidence (no bio, few follows, history of sketchy replies, inappropriate instance name). 
@Struggle_Tanuki @vegan I agree that it is legit for people to have few followers and disproportionate follows to followers is another good indicator. Thanks. Mastodon can be a confusing place. When sussing out trolls amongst normal users multiple indicators should be aggregated together. That was my intention with the post. 
@jblue @Struggle_Tanuki @vegan The number of followers someone has is not a good metric to judge people. I've generally found that people chasing after followers tend to be more trollish than the average person.
@chrisjeter @Struggle_Tanuki @vegan thank you for your comment. Yes, I have also noticed some trolling behavior in people chasing followers (
-like outrage fishing posts). They’ll add hundreds of following in a day and the next week unfollow after getting lots of follow-backs. 
My experience for the most egregious trolls (constant racism, transphobia, misogyny) is that they only have a handful of followers.
@jblue Thank you.
@jblue they weren’t any of those things, just someone I saw who thought mocking someone I’ve known for decades based on looks and bio was funny. Not into the whole gonna get likes from bros making fun of women thing. Just blocked though.
@CatDragon wow, people are such jerks. I hope your friend is ok and wasn’t torn up about it.
@jblue nah we’re too old to be bothered , I just find it annoying that there are still people who amuse themselves by insulting people they don’t know.