Evaluating the Ethics of Follow-for-Follow: A Personal Journey

Follow-for-Follow: A Disheartening Experience with a Fellow Writer

Trust, Betrayal, and the Follow-for-Follow Dilemma: A Writer’s Reflection

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Unlike my normal stories which are always in a bright and positive tone focusing on stories about positive mindset, self-improvement, or writing tips, etc., I feel compelled to share a recent personal experience that wasn’t quite as pleasant.

Normally I feel great about the practice of “Follow-for-Follow” and encourage others to do so as well but this experience made me think about it once more.

What I would like to share is 3 points below by the end of this story.

• Summary of what has happened?
• Actions I have taken
• My personal reflection and recommendation

I’m confident you’ll find something valuable to learn and apply — as you always can from my stories. So, let’s go!

1. Summary of What Has Happened?

There was this particular writer in our publication — “Follower Booster Hub” where writers commit to practicing “Follow-for-Follow” and “50-claps”.

I can’t disclose his name but he did well with our publication. He has been writing regularly for our publication and as I would like to help promote his work and encourage others to follow his articles, I would always highlight his stories, give 50 claps, and leave below comments.

As a committed writer of Follower Booster Hub, he always followed back other users as promised. He was getting traction and soon enough I saw him reaching the 1000-follower milestone — I was so happy to see it as if it was my milestone as he has been there with us since the inception of this publication.

Then one day I was checking his submission to Follower Booster Hub as an editor, and I found something weird or rather absurd — BOOM! He unfollowed all his followers except for a few writers!

This was very disappointing and saddening, as it felt like he betrayed the trust of other writers who trusted him and followed him in return for follow back.

Note: I am not suggesting that individuals who don’t reciprocate a follow is wrong. Many writers choose this approach, and I fully respect it, understanding their aim is to attract a genuine audience that follows because they enjoy their articles.

I almost felt like he betrayed the community. If he intended to take the above path which is to gain genuine followers, he shouldn’t have gathered followers using the “Follow-for-Follow” method and by joining the Follower Booster Hub!

His intent was clear — To get enough followers and then cut off all “Followings” once he reached his goal of 1000 followers, which really disgusted me. He obviously found a loophole in Meidum where no notification is sent when someone unfollows you.

2. Actions I Have Taken

I was puzzled at first but once I understood his true intent, I took the following actions.

• I immediately unpublished all his articles, removed him from the writer list, and revoked his writer access to our publication.
• I have unfollowed him.
• I have blocked him.

Have I gone too far by taking such extreme measures? No, I don’t think so. He is now just being taken away from what he enjoyed as a user who practices “Follow-for-follow”, writer access to Follower Booster Hub publication, and just one follower (myself), doesn’t think he lost it all which is all followers he has gained by using this “Follow-for-Follow” method.

What would have been a drastic action is to tag all his followers and let them know what happened so that they also make informed decisions — To choose whether to continue to follow him or not. But I didn’t go that far.

3. My Personal Reflection and Recommendation

I understand many people want to look like great writers. But having fewer “Following” as compared to “Followers” doesn’t reflect anything about your writing skill as a writer — It just reflects two things:

1. You carefully choose what kind of stories you want to see more from other writers (writers who you truly resonate with).
2. You have chosen to gather a more genuine audience for your stories.

Personally, I feel both methods are a good way to grow as a writer but this occurrence has made me think about one thing.

“Is there anything I can share with other writers to prevent this ego-boosted behavior — unfollowing everyone once one reaches the target number of followers?”

I have been thinking for a full day, but I reached the conclusion that I can’t control their behavior as a writer. It’s their choice and Karma they would face eventually.

However, I found one good way if you are super conscious about the number of “Following” being displayed on your profile page.

Below are step-by-step actions to be taken to remove “Following” from your profile.

1. Click on the “…” sign and choose “Design your profile”.

2. Unclick below button.

TADA! Below is the outcome you will see once you make this change. Notice there is no “Following” being displayed anymore?

Did I become a better writer by doing this? — My answer was “No”.

So I chose to enable the blogroll option to display how many people I am actually following — This actually does help me to get more followers as many users can trust that I practice “Follow-for-Follow” and follow me easily, by showing my “Following” count which is around the same number as my “Follower” counts.

This is a simple trick — Something to think about if you are super conscious about what others think about your “Followers” and “Following” count.

I think no one really cares about it except yourself but I hope this method can be used to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.

Wrapping It Up

In the end, the idea of “Follow-for-Follow” on Medium is meant to support each other and today I learned today that there will be cases that this strategy doesn’t work out as expected.

This rare bad experience led to actions against the writer who let the community and other writers down. It also reminds us that while supporting each other is good, we should be aware that not everyone will stick to their word till the end.

However, this shouldn’t discourage us from helping each other. It’s more about finding better ways to support one another without getting taken advantage of. This experience makes us think about how to build a stronger, fairer community for all writers.

Regardless of what has happened, I have a strong belief in our community:

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” — Ernest Hemingway

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• Join the Largest Medium Community of “Follow-for-Follow” & “50-Claps” with this link.

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