@freemo Just realized, is this because of the new influx of indian posters? If so, then know that most of them are bots. They are popping up on all instances. Comment something on their posts and see if the response makes any sense.
India recently blocked twitter so a lot of people are comming to the fediverse. Which includes advertising and data mining networks that have to rebuild their bot netoworks.
Most or all followers of those "people" should be similar accounts.
@compass_straight_edge I also interact with all new users who post on our local time line. They do all appear to be real people. But yes it is partly related to the new indian users.