Hm, I don’t know if it makes a difference. I could see having 50 organic followers and 100 fake ones being roughly equivalent to having 50 organic ones and no fake followers. Otherwise you could sabotage somebody you don’t like by making a ton of fake accounts and follow them.

But again, I don’t know so maybe this is a big no-go in the long run.

Not only this, but at what point does it then almost start to become just a money-grab?

It’s not like you’d steal money from them. If they don’t read your articles you don’t even reduce the amount of money that the other people they read would get. Sure, you’re “polluting” their feed with articles that they don’t care about, but there is always an easy opt-out again by just unfollowing.

Like I said, I’m not a fan of the follow-for-follow idea either. It seems weird, a bit desperate and spends so much effort into something that won’t ultimately matter (on platforms that don’t hide features behind follower counts — unlike Medium). But I honestly understand it given that medium decided to put up a 100 followers limit. When I read that announcement I immediately expected more of these kind of posts to pop up and become popular. It just encourages getting followers at any price instead of building up slowly but deliberately. Maybe that’s sabotaging your long-term impact, but that’s simply what Medium currently encourages for small writers and I can hardly blame people for playing the game — or attempt to game the game.