On the Fediverse, and especially on Mastodon, if you follow an account by clicking the Follow button it then acknowledges this by changing into a “Following” or “Unfollow” button. However, if the follow hasn’t actually happened it turns into a “Pending” or “Cancel Follow” button.
Usually, this means you’ve tried to follow an account that needs manual approval of followers, and you have to wait for the owner to approve your request. You can tell if an account requires approval as it will have a padlock icon 🔒 on its profile next to the username.
They don’t have follow requests switched on, so why does it say they do?
Sometimes this message appears even when the account you’re trying to follow doesn’t have manual approval mode switched on. In this case, the message may be caused by several other things:
- A software bug which has prevented the follow going through properly. This kind of bug is especially common if you’re trying to follow an account on a new or experimental type of Fediverse server.
- A server is overwhelmed with stuff it has to do (such as new members signing up), and is struggling to keep up so it puts tasks into a queue to deal with later.
- The server of the person you’re trying to follow has silenced your server. This restricts communications between the two servers.
What do I do if my follow has turned into a follow request?
If you see that an attempted follow has turned into a follow request but the other account doesn’t have requests switched on, try leaving it for a while as it may just be a temporary glitch.
If that doesn’t help, try cancelling the follow completely, wait for a while and then try clicking follow again, which sometimes helps the follow to go through properly.
If it still doesn’t work, contact your own server admin, and if they can’t help try contacting the admin of the server for the account you’re trying to follow.
Does this message mean someone has blocked me?
No. They probably just have follow requests switched on, and if they don’t then there’s just a technical problem.