# Following a member



## Cenzontle

What does it mean when I receive an Alert that says someone is "following" me? 
And is there someone who I should follow?


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## Peterdg

If someone is following you, that someone will get an alert every time you post something.

If you don't want that, you can restrict who will get alerts when you post something in you privacy settings:

Under the heading "People Who May...", the last setting is: "receive your news feed". You can unselect this option, in which case none of your followers will be alerted when you post something, or you can restrict it to "People You Follow Only", in which case only people that you follow yourself will get alerted when you post something if they follow you.


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## bearded

Just a question for completing the ''following'' mechanism:  if someone that's following me gets fed up and ceases following me, do I receive an alert/advice? Thank you.


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## Cagey

I don't think so, since all it would do is spread puzzlement or bad feelings, but I'm not sure. Let's do an experiment. 

I'll start following you right now, and then I'll stop following you tomorrow.  You can see whether you get a notification.


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## bearded

OK, thank you.  I'll let you know when I'm back from my vacation towards Nov.13th.


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## bearded

Hi Cagey
As a matter of fact, I received no notification when you stopped following me. Now I understand that, as a consequence, it is actually impossible for  members to know who is 'following' them at a given moment.
Many thanks for the experiment and your kindness.


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## Kelly B

I find it mildly creepy, but I've decided not to care, figuring they'll probably get bored and go back to ignoring me eventually.


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## Loob

I would definitely vote for people not to be notified when someone starts following them.

On my tablet, I'm pretty cack-handed: I've hit the 'follow' button by mistake *twice*


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## siares

bearded man said:


> impossible for members to know who is 'following' them at a given moment.


You cannot search for them but if you think somebody is following you / stopped following you, you can hover over over the Follow on their profile (for members you are not following) or over Unfollow (for members you are following) and it should say: siares is following you, or siares is not following you.
I've started to follow you now.


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## bearded

Hi Siares
Thank you for following me.  But no, nothing appears when I hover over 'Follow' in your profile (or in the profile of other members, of whom I was notified that they were following me)...


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## siares

Hi bearded man, then that is also a partial answer. If nothing appears as you hover over Follow in my profile, that means I must be following you (or maybe ignoring you).
When I hover over your profile, it says 'bearded man is not following you'.


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## bearded

Thank you for your advice.  I now tried with people who certainly do not follow me, and again nothing at all appears when I hover over 'Follow' in their profile.  I cannot explain why it works differently with you.

EDIT:
Just now I 've discovered that it works within the small ''box'':  so far I had tried in the ''profile page''.  I now see what you meant, and please receive a great many thanks!


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## siares

Strange.
I also tried ignoring without unfollowing and what the system does, all your posts vanished but you remained in the list of 'people you follow' (I cancelled the ignoring now).

Edit: glad that it works for you!


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## bearded

Please read my EDIT, and thanks a lot again.


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## velisarius

I don't know where else to post this confession, but if anyone thinks I'm following them (because they received a notification) it's because my big clumsy and arthritic fingers tapped on "follow" by mistake.


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