I wasn’t aware of this feature until you brought it up. Looking at mine, it consists of: people I’ve interacted with in comments and in person and people I’ve helped with IDs. If you’re comfortable with local taxa, becoming one of your area’s consistent identifiers would probably increase followers.
I think there may be a generational factor with respect to followers, for lack of a better term. I grew up with a great emphasis on internet privacy, where people rarely used their real names and had cheesy usernames like xX IAmSoCool Xx and instant messaging was the way to connect, usually just with people I knew somewhat.
With the rise of social media and the rise of platforms like YouTube and Instagram, it’s changed the dynamic where one content creator and many followers is now a more common. I guess with that can come a feeling of being shunned if one doesn’t have followers?
Maybe it’s just me or that bias from having grown up as I did, but this features seems a little buried in the platform? It’s much less prominent than making observations, suggesting IDs, or making comments. Maybe this is another factor?
However, I do follow observations (not people). If there’s something I see that I can’t identify it’s useful to get a notification as the ID gets refined. I also ‘favorite’ observations if they’re funny (thanks @raymie) or they have interesting comments.
I probably won’t use the people following feature going forward, given @artemesia’s comments and topic: Why is iNat male-dominated? I don’t want to make someone feel uncomfortable by following them. I manually ‘follow’ some profiles of locally active observers/identifiers by checking their profiles for new observations, usually to concur IDs in gratitude for their enthusiasm/support of the local iNat community.