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I also have some of the scripts I used to unfollow about 1000 friends at once if anyone doesn't believe me about the timelocks

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As the other reply comments, is it to protect users perhaps?

I just unfollowed may be 10 of my friends and I noticed no "timelocks". A scripted mass "unfollow" might be something the site notices but is normal user behavior penalized?

That's a good point, if you write a script to unfollow friends after about a 100 friends you will get an error. And that is a daily maximum. You have to wait another day to remove more. So if you have 2,000 friends you will need to focus for an entire month to do so.

At the end of the day unfollowing simplifies your timeline which lowers your engagement. The same applies to unfriending but I didn't mention that.

Can you explain more on the timelocks that you mention. I could imagine Facebook adds them also to protect consumers, and or LinkedIn to ensure people don't abuse the network

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