@atomicpoet I wonder if this is completely artificial.

Observations:
- codebase for mastodonusercount bot will, if it sees a "too large" increase in usercount, add them in stages: every time data is obtained, supposedly every 15 minutes, a maximum of 100 users are added, so for one server that would be 400 every hour until it hits the "real" usercount
- calckey now supports mastodon api (in beta), and the-federation.info shows some calckey instances under both calckey and mastodon for now
- at least one calckey instance is obviously faking usercounts (plasmatrap[.]com)