Afterthought as to why public knowledge of follows gives me the creeps. Although the intent is...
For example, if you're following user A and user A is following 23 other people, it might be helpful to check those folks out since you're interested in user A.
To me, this is an open invitation for trolls. There are way too many impotent, nasty creeps in cyberspace who will devour this as fresh meat in their mission to harass strangers who can't retaliate physically. JMO