My read of the discourse today is that there are a lot of people who no longer want a follow model, but would like to switch to a full 'friend request yes/no' model for mastodon/fedi etc. Which is there but off by default, and has the same oddness as twitters 'private' mode, where you're still seen by everyone who followed beforehand.
It's the same desired public, but minus those people use case that we all want, and why publics are hard. https://epeus.blogspot.com/2008/04/digital-publics-conversations-and.html
