@feditips
What about if you *don't* have manual switched on, but you get a notification from people waiting to follow you.

I got one from an account run by two people who are apparently well-known, and couldn't understand why a) they were following an unknown newbie like me, and b) there "follow" request needed an OK from me.

The whole thing was confusing so I just declined.

@feditips
This is important information. I'm still learning to navigate with Mastodon and appreciate those that pass on tips to those of us that are newer to this format.

@feditips thanks for posting this info. I am new here and still trying to figure everything out.

@feditips And the cure is? Does one get notified when one is followed or unfollowed? 😀​

@feditips Thanks for the tips.

@feditips Yeah, this has happened to me a lot

@feditips It would probably help if the UI made it clear that this "pending" status is different from "waiting for manual approval".

And I wonder how often do these requests fail to "complete", does anybody have numbers on that? (That is, how often does it need to be re-done instead of just waiting.)

Also: depending on the side which is experiencing congestion, when A follows B, B's side may actually see that A has successfully followed B, even if A still sees it as pending.

@feditips
Can you tell me what this means? What does it mean that the profile has been hidden?
Thank you.

@feditips I wish I had come across this tip earlier. This kept happening to me with several accounts, but it too me ages to work out what was going on.

@feditips Yep had this when the great bird migration of Winter 22 started. Gave it a couple of days then re-tried and the follow went through immediately.

@feditips that’s good to know. I thought it was just for follow approval.

@feditips it's implied in your wording, but to be very explicit about it: that means that one can see "pending approval" even for accounts without approval requirement, which is as counter intuitive as it sounds. It took me 24 hours to be able to follow my own pixelfed account from mastodon. The key is indeed just to wait.

@feditips I have tried to follow an account on the same mastodonapp.uk server and there is no padlock next to their name that I can see but it’s showing as Pending. If their account is not locked, does this mean I won’t be able to follow if there is no request/ they’re not aware of the request? I am using the official iOS app.