Depends on what people want. For threadiverse who cares, this is topic based not people based.
For a lot of micro blogging this is for people that either want to be the one people follow or for people that want to follow those people. I am not one of those people. You do have a point though about those people. That is not the the threadiverse though… not related to lemmy or kbin.
Drivers vary though. For tube sites it is more about monetization. So that it yet another driver.