Follow Is Subscription — So It’s Asymmetric

I added a follow button to the profile screen today. The code was short. What actually took time were two questions.

1. What does “follow” mean here?
2. Should follower/following counts be visible?

1. Defining the meaning

The word “follow” smushes two different relationships into one.

• Friend-style: bidirectional. Both sides need to accept; you see each other’s activity.
• Subscription-style: one-way. I subscribe to you; your published content shows up in my feed.

Fecit took the subscription route. We already have a “friend” feature for the other case. What I actually wanted wasn’t another two-way relationship — it was a way to see the Overviews and Freeboard posts of users I find interesting, gathered into my feed.

That gives us: follow = content subscription. One-way. No consent required from the other side.

2. Showing counts

My first instinct was to hide all counts. If this is a subscription tool, less social comparison is cleaner.

But take one more step and you see: the follower count and the following count are different kinds of information.

• Follower count — how many people subscribe to what you publish. A public signal. A quick read on someone you’ve never seen before.
• Following count — how many people you subscribe to. Personal curation info. No reason for everyone to see it.

Asymmetry is the natural answer. So I show the follower count and hide the following count.

The result

The profile screen ended up simple. Nickname, “N followers,” a follow button, an introduction. That’s it.

The asymmetric choice looks small, but — some networks are designed so that “how many people I follow” becomes a flex; others hide it on purpose. Same data, different exposure, and the space ends up feeling subtly different because of it.

Fecit isn’t supposed to be a place to flex; it’s a place to keep showing up. And in that frame, hiding the following count is just the right call.