So when exactly did you go into the coma you just awoke from, 1993? No sort of forum can operate solely on content users explicitly follow. That's just unfederated blogs. On an online forum there's always going to be some public stream that pulls content from all user posts. Without moderation it almost instantly devolves to bigots and spammers. We've seen this routinely for the past 30 years of online forums.
So "just don't follow" is not only meaningless advice but it's painfully naive.
So "just don't follow" is not only meaningless advice but it's painfully naive.