I guess followers on the Fediverse are listed in reverse order by time. This morning I scrolled to the bottom of my followers list and clicked on the oldest 150 of them to see what they have been tooting in case I overlooked them. This is what I found, which probably will not surprise anyone:
1. More than 90% are inactive profiles with toots being years old, or empty feeds that may result from a setting for older toots to expire.
2. Some profiles are defunct profiles on old instances that have been abandoned and replaced by new active profiles.
3. Some profiles contain new toots I missed, perhaps because they contain no hashtags.
I think many members lose interest for various reasons, including if they do not get much interaction from others—this surely also happens on other social media platforms. What to do, if anything? Guapo, my dog, is meanwhile dreaming and making muffled barking sounds in his sleep.