Does this really happen? Or maybe just in the USA?
Why would I, as a customer, care about server's follower count? Is it somehow correlated with their performance?
It is nigh on impossible to get a literary manager these days unless you have a sizable social media following, for example.
It's absolute brain rot.
chicken/egg of course, but the question people – especially technologists – should be asking is: is that really helping society progress? I would argue, like this article does, that it isn't and is indeed harming society by atomizing and attempting to quantify behavior in the name of 'choice' which of course is a non-sequitur. The commercial engines should be in service of humanity and enrichment, not the other way around. A brilliant writer isn't a social media maven, nor should they be.
But a similar thing has been part of the service industry for a long time - attractive and charismatic people will often get the best shifts, even if they're not necessarily the hardest working or best at the other aspects of the job. I suspect if such a thing around the followers is happening now, it's just the a new manifestation of the same underlying cause.