Have you noticed that seemingly random people have begun following you on TikTok?
This can be confusing, and cause you to wonder how they’re even finding your account in the first place!
But why are random people following you on TikTok, and should you try to stop it?
In this article, we’ll cover everything that you need to know!
Why Are Random People Following You On TikTok?
If random people have begun following you on TikTok, this is usually caused by bot accounts. Bots may follow others in order to appear legitimate, and avoid getting banned by TikTok’s moderation system.
Alternatively, it may be that people are following you in hopes that you will follow back.
Let’s look at each possible reason in more detail!
1. Bot Accounts
The first and most common reason is that the followers are bot or spam accounts.
You can usually identify bot accounts because they’ll be following a lot of people with relatively few followers themselves. Additionally, they may not have any TikTok videos posted and if they do, it is usually either spam or stolen from someone else.
Bot accounts are usually not ran by humans, but instead by software. This means any attempt to interact with them or ask them why they followed you is likely to be ignored.
So, why do bot accounts follow random people?
Usually, this is an effort to try and make their accounts appear more legitimate. Because following people is a normal function that all real users of TikTok do, a bot account looks more natural if it is also following some people as well – even if the account has never actually posted anything themselves.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’re actually watching your videos, or will even interact with them at all. It simply means they want to avoid being banned more quickly.
2. People Trying To Get More Followers
Since social media first became a thing, people have been trying to build their own following by following others.
This method is called ‘follow / unfollow’, and works like this:
Someone follows a bunch of accounts. Because this generates a notification, some people will then go check out that person’s page and follow them back as well. Then after a few days, they unfollow you (and everyone else they followed), and repeat the process.
It can be disheartening when this happens to you, because the person never really cared about your content in the first place – they were just selfishly hoping you’d follow them, without noticing they unfollowed you later.
Although this strategy first became popular on Twitter and later on Instagram, we now see the same thing happening with TikTok accounts as well.
Thankfully, TikTok has follow limits in place to try and cut down on this behavior. Still, it does happen to a certain degree.
These accounts can usually be recognized because they will have a large number of followers, but aren’t following a large number of people themselves. When you check out their following list, the other accounts they’re following appear to be random as well – rather than being primarily composed of larger creators.
3. They Want To Hide Their Following List
Finally, in some circumstances someone may have followed you in order to dilute their following list.
For example, if they followed certain creators they’re ashamed or embarrassed of, they may have immediately followed a bunch of random accounts afterwards so other people wouldn’t be able to see them.
This is because TikTok shows the people you’ve followed most recently first – so in order to find the account they want to hide, someone would need to scroll through a lot of random people beforehand.
Admittedly, this usually isn’t the reason you gain random followers. However, from time-to-time something like this does happen.
Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, it is safest to assume that the random followers you’re acquiring are bot accounts.
Should You Block Bot Accounts On TikTok?
Let’s say that a bunch of bot accounts started following you on TikTok. Should you take the time to block them, or just let them be?
Unless they’re bothering you in some way, it doesn’t really do you much harm to let the bots continue following you on your account. Although they won’t like or interact with your videos at all, they are unlikely to negatively affect your video’s reach in any way.
Bots tend to follow a large amount of accounts, and have no reason to actually browse through their For You page. Therefore, they are unlikely to have any impact on your video’s performance in the TikTok algorithm.
Additionally, most bot accounts end up getting banned and deleted before too long anyway. Therefore, it’s unlikely they’ll remain on your follower list for long.
However, if their presence makes you uncomfortable in any way, don’t be afraid to hit the block button.
Conclusion
Some people believe that random followers are a ploy by TikTok to make you feel popular. However, this simply isn’t true.
The overwhelming majority of the time, random followers that you get out of nowhere are simply bot accounts, trying to appear legitimate to avoid getting banned.
Alternatively, it may be other TikTok creators looking to boost their own following.
I hope that you’ve found this article helpful. If you have any other questions about TikTok, please ask them using the comment form below.
Wishing you the best,
– James McAllister