Back on Reddit, if I wrote a comment, and then some minutes later my comment karma jumped, I'd know that I wrote a comment that people liked. People tended to like some pretty base stuff, so my highest karma posts were what I would consider my most dumb and pointless comments. I didn't succumb, but I guess there's something about the gamification of social interactions that leads to worse interactions. It's like "likes" on Facebook. You get a little guilty happy feeling, as if now you feel more validated. Someone cares! Or something vaguely to that effect.

So when you see how many upvotes or "hubski ticks" you got, it tells you what people consider a good comment. Which, as the old guard of a social website becomes outnumbered, could become more and more base. The number of followers that you have could also be considered a type of upvote point system in the gamification of social interactions. If you post a lowest-common-denominator comment and see your follower count shoot up, then you might be incentivized to do the same in the future.

On the other hand, if you're giving away badges, you have nothing to gain by doing that, and since badges are rare because it takes a while in order to get them to give out, it's more meaningful.

I agree with myself regarding the upvotes and upticks. I think that should be hidden. I'm not convinced that followers have that same gamification/lowest-common-denominator effect.

Kleinbl00 is seeing it from a different perspective, that the people who are unfollowing other people are benefiting from feeling like they're hurting someone because it keeps us human, and that the people being unfollowed get to know that they just did something that people don't approve of. Also that it keeps us aware of who the old guard is, and what they approve of.

In this case, letting us see how many people follow us but not letting us see the actual individuals following us is the worst of both worlds. You have an abstraction of "followers" in which you don't have any meaningful relationship with them so it just becomes another point system. If you're going to show followers at all, I think you need to have that human relationship. Otherwise, don't show how many followers there are. The last thing I want is to see the phrase, "sweet sweet followers" somewhere on this site. (This kind of culture: http://imgur.com/r/TrollXChromosomes/225AM).

I've yet to make up my mind really about this issue. More than anything else, I think it's important to think about what kinds of positive and negative incentives are being extended on both sides of the follower-leader perspective.

It'd be interesting to see some clinical research into Internet incentives and relationships. Could a site be engineered to prevent extreme "filter bubbles" (http://dontbubble.us) (being able to create your own bubble is what's good about hubski, but it's also a potential danger when or if those bubbles become too insulating), karma pandering, mob mentality, trolling, or other "bad" social interactions based on such clinical research? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_evaluation_theory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Determination_Theory, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrinsic_motivation seem relevant.)

I should mention that I do like mk's solution.