Give users control over who follows them
Proposal
GitLab has recently introduced "followers", e.g.: https://gitlab.com/users/nick.thomas/followers . Looks like this was the introducing MR: !45451 (merged)
As a GitLab team member, I'm required to have a public profile, and I don't particularly mind that, but I don't want to become part of a social graph, and I'm very motivated by that concern.
In this particular case, I'd like to be able to opt-out of this aspect entirely, and uncheck a box in my profile. With the box unchecked, nobody would be able to follow me, and I wouldn't be able to follow anyone else. For instance, Duolingo has a number of social network features, but at its heart it's a language learning application, and you can opt out of all the social aspects if you want to by unchecking a single box in the user profile:
If we can't go that far, then at a minimum we need to consider self-service moderation tools - it's essential to be able to prevent specific individuals from following us, particularly as this feature set grows over time. This is the approach GitHub has taken:
The downside is that it's difficult to maintain the block list, and it goes further than desired - people who decide to follow me on GitHub find themselves unable to at-mention me, for instance.