Failure of Twitter Symmetry

The dark side of Twitter

There are at least 3 types of Twitter users: 1) Those who follow accounts that share some specific tweets (the followers), 2) Those who connect with people to interact as in any other social media (the friends), and 3) Those who are or want to be the news streams (the leaders). There are also Twitter parasites, an ever-growing population, who does a mass-following and every day perform a mass-unfollowing. In this procedure, they would have accumulated a million followers while just following a few thousand. These Twitter parasites feed on the human psychology - when a "star user" follows you, you tend to follow them back. They play a numbers game to trick people to follow-back, and to unfollow just after someone followed them back. I have been followed by many such verified Twitter star users to unfollow me only after a few weeks since I followed them back. 

I use Twitter for friendship. To share and interact with interesting people. I am not on Twitter to follow visionaries. There are also another set of Twitter users who start like me (under the category 2 above), and then during some specific time decide to be like the category 1 or 3. They then perform a mass-unfollow. Now you end up following their random musings - one way.

I suggest Twitter have an automated workflow - when someone who followed you first decides to unfollow you, automatically unfollow them back. This will stop the Twitter parasites and those who suddenly waken up just before the new year to follow only the "worthy accounts". My suggestion for the Twitter parasites - there is no real reward to unfollow those who fell into your trap and followed back. Isn't it more important to keep the communication than just having a large number of passive followers?