Bad idea of the day:
A "mastodon recommended follower" back-end that picks at random a recent-poster from the same node that has no network overlap at all (or, if that's not possible, one with as little network overlap as possible).
In other words, rather than optimizing for best match, optimize for worst match & see what happens to social interaction.
@enkiv2 I'd hate this on Twitter but if this was an opt-in on Masto with only well-moderated instances I'd actually be interested
@noiob
Just like on twitter, actually accepting follow recommendations would need to be opt-in.
@enkiv2 nah I mean showing up in follow recs
@noiob
One way to make the bot opt-in is to have the set of suggestions be equal to the set of people following the bot. Then, it could take requests for people to follow, but also (for instance) post #ff messages on fridays.
This would be pretty straightforward but it also means that the pool of potential suggestions is both small and already listed in one place.