I would like to inform any future developers that pursuing automated measures to follow users, stop. GitHub will flag your account and all will be for naught. Remember, you exist on someone else's platform and you must respect their rules, by pen or sword.
I have provided a transcript below for reference:
Hi Michael,
I'm writing on behalf of GitHub Support because it seems you may be using automated measures to follow tens of thousands of users. While we certainly encourage using the follow feature to participate in the GitHub community, many of our users equate this type of behavior with spam, as it seems to only serve the purpose of drawing unsolicited attention to your GitHub profile. This becomes an unnecessary distraction for our community members.
At this time, we would ask that you remove any automated follows and that you no longer use these mass follow techniques. Keep in mind that we do consider this spammy behavior, and we do have the option of taking further action in that regard. We'd rather not, of course, as we hope for your cooperation!
Please let us know if you have any questions.
All best, Mr. Anderson
And also: The GitHub Terms of Service C.3. Acceptable Use: Conduct Restrictions
The below remains as a cautionary tale. Icarus, you flew too high and the sun would not let you so near.
This project is to follow as many people as possible on Github. It is to get that number as high as I can get, using what I think is a reasonable strategy (There exists no automation strategy that is acceptable). This also served as a learning project for some new technologies I have been picking up, so there is not great emphasis on performance or efficiency.
Automatically follows users for a patron account, starting from a seed user and continuing on using the seed user's followers for subsequent follows.
- MongoDB + Mongoose
- NodeJS
- NightmareJS
- GithubAPI + Octokat
- ES6 Style Vanilla Promises Only!
If you were unfortunate enough to utilize this and received a subsequent flag on your account, I have provided a command to start removing all your followers, rectify the infraction and redeem your account status.
node remove
You will end up with one follower, me because we got into this mess together, and we should start over together! On the shoulders of the titans.