I haven’t, which is a bit of a “shame on me” because it had been mentioned to me in this thread. The problem is that I am no longer an admin, just a mod in that community, and the person or persons currently in charge don’t feel comfortable administering Discourse so they’re not really open to trying new plugins.
I would only use the plugin if it allowed making the follow feature available only to admins, not every user. This is to avoid the “social platform” dynamics, which I would prefer to avoid.
Still I think there’s an argument to be made for making something like this a core part of Discourse. Just the more basic features aimed at fighting spammers. I know the team (rightfully) invests a lot in that area, and that’s a pretty core concern of every community out there. The bots are getting powerful…