On inspection of these new followers, I'm clearly having the same problem as the other posters here: the new followers don't have real blogs (they don't have any posts, or they're hawking a product or something.) It's so annoying. And now my new blog, with only one post, already has 6 followers - 3 of which are clearly not legitimate.

I like scriptorobscura's advice to start reporting them to WordPress; I'll start doing that. But I hope WordPress comes up with a way to solve this problem soon. It makes the blog stats kind of worthless, which is a shame. And it really takes something away from the whole concept of blogging - to know that my posts are going into the inboxes of somewhat unscrupulous people. It makes me worry about what might become of my content (be stolen?), and it makes me feel a little self-conscious as well - which isn't so effective for the blogging!

There definitely needs to be a function for blocking followers.

I have complained about many of the same people other legit WP bloggers have been complaining about (I've seen the names posted in other forum threads).

IF nothing else... why won't WP at least allow it's USERS (us) to moderate our "followers"? Just like we get to choose to moderate comments?

Now wouldn't THAT be an easy fix?

I did it last week, even though it pained me. (I looooooove "likes"— they're the easiest way for my friends and readers to stop by and show appreciation for something they like without having to commit to saying anything. And I know some honest people, boy. They don't like stuff just to like it. I love that. )

But, since I turned off the like button, I'm enjoying watching those sploggy blogs waste their energy spliking my blog posts alllll day from their WP RSS Reader. They can splike all they want; my friends and readers will never know about it.

An unfortunate side effect of turning off all likes is that I am now aware of a small handful of real WP bloggers who have been using their WP RSS feed like button to advertise their presence on my blog by liking posts they have not actually seen nor read.

Although fake liking a post is not against any WordPress TOS or rule, I think of it as the second-worst blogging mojo there is. (The worst being plagiarism.)

Also, because my likes are turned off and they don't know it, these naughty real WP bloggers are liking nothing at all. It's the one-hand-clapping koan, WordPress style. Booyah!

More importantly, Google Reader is an RSS reader, not a blog platform.

And WordPress is not an RSS reader— WordPress is a blog platform that happens to offer its bloggers an RSS reader.

Put more simply, WordPress is a place where you go to write a blog, and Google Reader is a place where you go to read all the blogs you like in one place, instead of hunting them down in your bookmarks.

However, you can follow all of the blogs you love on WP, or on an RSS reader like Google, or both, even— but to follow blogs using the WP RSS reader, you must have a WordPress blog— even if you don't do anything with it.

These organic spam creators (meaning "people") are creating splogs on WP— a splog is a spam blog.

WP sploggers follow WP blogs like any regular blogger might, but with one crucial difference: their intent is to direct your attention to businesses offsite and away from WordPress.

Sploggers don't want to get caught by Akismet, either— so instead of commenting on your post, they "like" your posts in their WP RSS Reader, which is must faster anyway because sploggers don't even have to go to your blog to "splike"* your post.

They are hoping to get your attentions and those of your followers.

*I found out yesterday that this kind of spam is called "spliking" (spam liking), which cracked me up.

Like many of you, I'm reporting diligently (and carefully!), but not seeing removals yet.

This is what I'm doing about this mess:

I'm reporting all actual SPAM blogs with appropriate documentation and links; I'm reporting all TOS-violating blogs with appropriate notations.

The splogs that have already been reported and removed by WP before I got to them— but still have active Gravatars— I go in and report their Gravatars if I find TOS violations or splog-activity.

The ones I suspect, but cannot document or notate, I don't report— because there is not enough evidence and I don't want to clog up the reporting process for everyone else.

Regarding international bloggers: I do have an actual international readership, and I follow/read a number of international blogs. It's one of the things I like about WP— WP bloggers aren't cordoned off into areas where one's own language is spoken. Some blog platforms are designed to make bloggers interact only with same-language speakers. I prefer WP's way of doing things.

That said, given the splog and splike activity, I've had to add an extra step in my splog-hunting to account for international splogs.

All new international blogs with a splog-like feel to them, I've taken to running through Google Translate so I can look at them carefully in English. (The translation is really warped, but workable.)

If anything throws up an obvious splog flag, I send an English-version link or two through CopyScape, then a link or two to CopyScape in the blogger's original language to help me look for content scraping. (I also do it the old school way— pull a sentence from a post, throw quotes around it, and drop it into the Google search engine to see what turns up.)

If an international splog has really obvious TOS-violations, I just report those.

You have to be really careful though— I have one new reader from a small country whose blog is just covered end to end in sparkly gewgaws that would read as "spammy" to me, but when I went to translate her blog/check its scraper-ratio, I discovered she was totally legit. This girl genuinely likes happy sparkly things, and thanks to Google Translate, I discovered she likes to write about happy sparkly things that are going on in her real life.

Of course, I became her newest reader right then and there— who doesn't enjoy true life happy stories with actual snapshots of regular ol' fun stuff?

So, as I said, I'm careful. I'm sure you all are too.

Back to those nasty splogs—

None of the documented splogs I've reported in the last week have been pulled yet, nor have any of the TOS-violating splogs disappeared. I have been told by official sources that there is typically about a 48-hour turnaround on all reports— but this conversation is making me question the turnaround time as of late.

I also read on the forum... somewhere from Timethief that spam/TOS-violation reports are addressed in the order they are received. (Timethief, is this right? I hope I didn't misquote you!) As you probably have guessed, some people report blogs as splogs/TOS violations that aren't splogs/TOS violations— which I would assume slows everything down.

I'm frustrated, tired, and a little freaked. I've had "likes" on my blog turned off for almost a week now, and still the "splikes" keep coming from the WP Reader feed (which keeps likes turned on for some reason, but those likes are only visible on a blogger's own feed and your notification center.) I have new reader notifications turned off because it was bumming me right out to see frequent notifications like "AMAZONBUYMENOWPLEASE has just started following your blog!" on my phone.

Honestly, I could use a good word from the WP higher-ups right about now about... anything surrounding 2013's "Spring of the Mad Sploggers."

I have been diligently reporting these SPAM follows for a week and not a single one has been removed, even the extremely obvious ones. If the content "will be reviewed shortly", when does "shortly" happen?

I am reluctant to block follows because I don't want to cut off legitimate followers, but honestly, I am really fed up with doing this sort of policing. It bothers me that by having to click on the link to see if the follower is legitimate or not, I am giving these SPAM sites more hits - which is exactly what they are looking for.

I would really appreciate a clear explanation from WordPress as to what is being done to address this problem. And I would really like to know why blog owners cannot screen requests to follow, just as we can screen comments before deciding to post them.

Today was not too bad: I was only followed by one Religious Zealot, one person trying to teach me how to increase my follower-ship, one person from over in Asia somewhere (not sure as I couldn't read the blog but pretty good guess that they're not interested in my personal life) and one Legitimate follower (at least I think they are legitimate?!?).

Oh and last night there was the follower called something like AmazonStore but didn't count that one in today's tally! I reported them.

Yes, this is in jest and yes, I'm a little frustrated. Any updates??

WP seems to not care, even if they are "aware" of the issue. It seems they don't want to do anything about this or give us any control over who can follow us or not.

Then see here and scroll down to what macmanx (Staff says) at:
"So far, I can see that a fake follower accomplishes three things."
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/fake-follows-follow-spamming-and-like-spamming-rampant-on-wordpress?replies=16#post-1222524

The EXACT same thing has been happening to me. Please report each and every single one of these spammers to WordPress by using the "Report This Blog" link in the black admin bar at the top when you visit their blogs. Also please report their gravatar profiles for spam activity as well by using the "Report This Profile" option on the bottom right of each of their profiles. That is what I have been doing for each and every single one of them. Even if WordPress does nothing about it, maybe , maybe, *fingers crossed*, maybe if enough of us keep reporting and reporting these "follow" spammers and fake "followers" over and over again then maybe WordPress would be forced to do something about it. Not holding my breath though.

I'm still getting about 3-5 of them subscribing every day, despite the only way to currently follow my blog being the unremovable follow button in the black admin bar, which is only visible to logged-in WP.com users.

I've gotten an unreasonable increase in so-called followers lately, most of which are clearly "follow" spammers just looking to attract traffic to their blogs, or commercial spammers, or religious wing-nuts, or foreign-language blogs, all on completely unrelated topics to my blog, all just auto-subscribing to as many blogs as possible.

This has got to stop. This is really too much. Most of these followers have absolutely nothing to do with the topic of my blog whatsoever, and there is no way to remove them. I wish we could control these fake "followers"! Please give us the ability to remove them, because they're only increasing.

I haven't posted to my blog in close to a month, and still I get many many of these new so-called "followers" every day. It almost makes me wonder, if I never posted to my blog again, how many of these new "followers" would I get? How high would my so-called (and now completely meaningless) "follower count" go? They just keep coming and coming and subscribing and subscribing one after the other. This has been going on at a steady pace for several weeks now.

This is also despite the fact that I recently deleted all tags and categories on my blog, so presumably my posts would not be showing up in any topics pages, so I don't even know how these scumbags are even finding my blog. They must be using an automated program to "follow" as many random, completely unrelated blogs as possible.

WordPress needs to have a way for bloggers to deal with these fake WP.com "followers". I am not talking about fake email followers, I am talking about fake "followers" with WP.com accounts and blogs.

This has got to stop. WP needs to have some way for us to deal with these random, unrelated "followers". I consider these fake so-called "followers" to be a rampant and particularly pestilential form of spam. Not only are they blatantly and shamelessly fishing for traffic to their own sites, but by being subscribed to our blogs and receiving each of our posts to their email, they can then use that to copy our content and pass it off as their own, and use it to make money off of our content, on splogs, etc. or they can use our content in other unethical ways.

Please provide a way for us to stop and control this sudden influx of fake "followers". It is LONG overdue.

The only solution I could find so far is to eliminate the Email Subscription box from my blog. This is obviously a temporary and undesirable solution.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/likes/#likes-and-your-site
http://en.support.wordpress.com/likes/#turn-likes-onoff-on-specific-posts

Many bloggers would like for the "likes" to be removed, so that people will have to read and comment.

I don't think this would appeal to the younger crowd. I have read several posts on the subject as of late. I don't know if there is a solution. I have noticed people are "liking" more instead of commenting. It is aggravating.

Thank you,

Liz