Can you put the private link for followers next to the friends link, to know who interested?

StopMaskers said in #8:
> InkyDarkBird Also, many people brag about ratings. I think the ratings should be removed as well )

followers were not removed because people were bragging about them. they were removed because followers put quite a strain on the server, as explained by thibault in the post you linked yourself. ratings do not put a strain on the server, so people can brag about them all they want, and there is no reason to remove them.

Nowhere did thibault say that the reason for removing the follower count was because of the server load

"Of course it has an infrastructure cost. With 24 million follows, and counting, there is a lot happening on the servers to keep everyone notified about their friends activity.
That cost, we're willing to pay it, because it's worth it. So don't worry about it."

"Similarly, the visible followers number makes people create multiple accounts, beg for followers in chat rooms,
spam our inboxes, pollute our forums.
It makes the entire website worse, and it creates unnecessary work for our moderators.

@StopMaskers said in #7:
> @InkyDarkBird I'm not interested in the number of followers. I'd like to know who these followers are. And I have no reason to share that information with anyone.
Hmmmm... I see and understand your suggestion, but egotistical users would still try to promote themselves.
One way to do this would be to use legalism. I'm assuming when followers used to be visible, people who asked for followers were only warned or chatbanned if they did it excessively.

Maybe the punishment could turn into instantly chatbanning someone if they ask for followers?

@OleKawaii said in #12:
> "Similarly, the visible followers number makes people create multiple accounts, beg for followers in chat rooms,
> spam our inboxes, pollute our forums.
> It makes the entire website worse, and it creates unnecessary work for our moderators.

My suggestion to avoid this is to hide the number of followers from others (and disable access to followers in general for other users, so the number of followers cannot be calculated in any case by other users). That's what I wrote about in the beginning.
"private link"
"link jump can only be allowed for the user of this account"
I think with hidden followers, people will not spam about this.

@PLSDONTCLOSEMYACC said in #9:
> In that case i would like the feature where only the account holder can see his followers no one else

Yes, I'm writing about it.
lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/can-you-put-the-private-link-for-followers-next-to-the-friends-link-to-know-who-interested?page=2#14

@InkyDarkBird said in #13:
> Hmmmm... I see and understand your suggestion, but egotistical users would still try to promote themselves.
> One way to do this would be to use legalism. I'm assuming when followers used to be visible, people who asked for followers were only warned or chatbanned if they did it excessively.
>
> Maybe the punishment could turn into instantly chatbanning someone if they ask for followers?

I think with hidden (for others) followers, people will not spam about this.
Could check this experimentally and leave the function if all is well.
lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/can-you-put-the-private-link-for-followers-next-to-the-friends-link-to-know-who-interested?page=2#14

What is legalism?

@glbert said in #11:
> followers were not removed because people were bragging about them. they were removed because followers put quite a strain on the server, as explained by thibault in the post you linked yourself. ratings do not put a strain on the server, so people can brag about them all they want, and there is no reason to remove them.

The following function is not disabled, so the strain on the server remains (alerts on the left side of the website). Disabled access to the list of followers.

@StopMaskers said in #16:
> I think with hidden (for others) followers, people will not spam about this.
No, most of the cases when users asked for followers were for themselves, not others.

@InkyDarkBird
What do you mean "for themselves, not others"? "Follow me" vs. "Follow him"? That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the list of followers is available only to the user himself. And list of followers is hidden to other users. Everyone can only see their own list of followers.

Or do you mean motivation? Seeing a large number of followers. And it doesn't matter that others don't see.
If so:

If the number of followers used to be visible to everyone, just maybe they have been doing it to brag to others, you mentioned that. One can only determine the correlation of motives by conducting an experiment with followers hidden to others. And look at the situation.
Did people stop asking to follow after disabling access to list of followers? Maybe they have been doing it just to get attention.

Besides, you can create a team and ask to be a part of it. Whoever cares so much about followers will do so. No such problem? What to do about it? So we should disable the ability to find out who's on the team even for the creator of team himself?

I also noticed that one can't see all team members in a simple way. To do this, you need to scroll down the page. Is this also done for some purpose?

I have the September 2021 version of Lichess mobile app downloaded to see who follows me :D (I don't self promote)