Ah, I didn't think of that. Thank you.
2,189 karma · joined April 19, 2010
Of course malice isn't an issue, since they're real friends. But friends aren't always security-conscious with their computers. Someone might borrow his friend's computer and find that it's still logged into Facebook, or that the browser stores the credentials. Someone can sneak a peek while his friend looks at personal information in a cafe. The more real friends are added, the more likely this becomes.
4.2.2.2 could still be considered "valuable" because it's used as a public service for the Internet community, and its memorability increases the value of that service. And Google apparently thinks it can make money from the data it collects on its 8.8.8.8 nameserver; do you think that project would be just as valuable to Google if it were 216.44.159.113 instead?
There's little technical reason for The Onion to follow back its followers. Yes, Onion employees could read a random sample of their followers' tweets, or use filtering software that selects useful-looking tweets for human attention. But they can simply use their followers' RSS feeds for that; they don't need to formally follow them back. The only advantage I can think of is that Twitter automatically bundles your followees' RSS feeds together into a single feed. (But I'm curious how Twitter delivers an RSS feed that aggregates half a million talkative users -- does it still work at that volume?)
Naturally, follow-backs are merely symbolic at that scale, so mass unfollowing doesn't strike me as news. It was a little interesting to see the how many immediate unfollows The Onion's move triggered, though.