Did the relays you use change between clients? The client you use shouldn't have anything to do with spam you're seeing

Iris only shows frens of frens of frens, IIRC. So basically all it's doing is hiding accounts with no followers.

The problem with Iris is it sends notifs for other people's posts and the threading breaks down all the time. It's the best looking client but it's unstable. Although I had a ton of relays, so maybe it'll work better now that I've trimmed them down.