On various occasions, I would get a new bunch of people following me. I would check each of these new followers profiles and see if they had interacted with one of my stories. By interaction, I meant claps, highlights, or responses. Some had some interaction with one of my stories which confirms to me that they are legitimate followers. A false follower is one who follows you to get you to follow back, they are hoping to populate their profile in the number of followers like on Instagram or Twitter; I heart you, you heart me and together we go up in the rankings. They think Medium operates the same way. Most of the time they have no profile picture, no stories written, claps given or responses. That is a dead giveaway, I never click follow for those people. Yesterday, I had 7 new followers and this morning, 5 of them unfollowed me. Having checked yesterday’s new followers, I saw 5 of them had a blank profile and I knew those people were fishing and would soon unfollow me for not returning the favor. I only follow people whose writing interest me and whose stories I would be looking forward to reading more of. So, don’t worry about losing followers on occasion.