I agree - bad followers are no followers at all -- however - it would be nice to have some visual evidence of said bad accounts, spammers, hackers, or low-lifes who dwell on the periphery of Medium. Proof in other words.

For me it's a little like, the USPS (US Postal Service) leaving a note on my door stating - We removed several packages from your porch, because we determined they were incorrectly addressed to you or were sent by people with untraceable return addresses - huh?!

Personally, I'd want to see those packages so I can verify that they actually didn't belong to me.

If you had 10,500 followers and it went down to 9,500 - that a drop of about 9.5%. So, what do we extrapolate from that? That Medium has upwards of 10% false accounts, maybe more?

That's not a margin of error, that's an algorithm driving the bus. Where are the people?