GHOST ACCOUNTS OF MEDIUM?

What is the purpose?

On July 7th 2022 morning, the number of followers in my Medium account suddenly rise in number without notifications on my email which usually will be sent by Medium if I ever have several new followers.

I was curious. I took my time to count my followers. One by one. Several times. The result was obvious. No new followers. Only the number of followers was rise suddenly. The same with the account that I followed. As for now, when I type this piece, I followed 57 accounts (including one publication) but it shows on my profile that I’m following 65 accounts.

No pics = hoax. But let’s not forget that pics can be edited :D

My account has 213 followers when in reality there are only 187 followers.
26 Ghost Accounts in between. I’m sure it wasn’t because the users deactivated/deleted their accounts. It’s easy for me to notice the changes in the number since I only have a small number of followers and a small number of accounts that I followed, too.

Though the ‘Ghost Accounts’ wasn’t something important to me since it does nothing for the existence of my account here on Medium but I wonder why would Medium do that? two possibilities pop into my thoughts:

1. It was some bug or simply an error…?
2. To get their users hooked with the fake number? Who doesn’t love being ‘noticed’ by having lots of followers…?

Update (August 3th 2022): Or maybe Medium have other explanations here. Though I don’t know how it works or how the spammer does this to Medium by giving their users rising in ‘number’ of followers and ‘following’.

The “Algorithm”

Did it happen to other members, too…? I know many Medium users have lots of followers and probably won’t notice when their followers number increased or it doesn’t matter anyway just like how I felt about it.

I’m waiting for the number of my followers to change to the correct number as well as the number of the accounts that I ‘following’, too.

Let’s be honest to build ‘trust’ between users and this platform, Medium Staff, Medium? What do you think…?

This screenshot was taken on 7 July, it’s been two weeks now since the accident of Ghost Accounts happened.

UPDATE (01 Aug 2022):
Cool! Didn’t think that Medium would take action on it but they did!
Though they only corrected half of it at the moment.😀
The number of followers is correct (193) while the real number of ‘following’ is only 49 but is displayed as 58.

30 Followers gone in a night! 😀