Why following a deal does not move the price

Following is free, and it never counts toward a tier — not once, not partially, not in combination with anything else.

This is a deliberate design decision rather than a limitation. A tier threshold is a promise about how many people have actually committed. If free follows counted toward it, the number would measure attention rather than commitment, and every figure on the platform would quietly stop meaning what it says.

It also matters on the other side of the table. When we negotiate with a publisher, "four hundred advocates have paid to reserve this" is a fact they can price against. "Four hundred people clicked follow" is not, and a publisher who discovered we had blurred the two would be right never to trust a number from us again.

So the two counts are kept separate everywhere they appear, and we will never present one as the other.