Why does my twitter automatically follows people?

[Jane]

1. Why does my twitter automatically follows people? And how to make it stop?

2. After I unfollow them, their profile pics is still display on my profile. How do I remove it?

[Vamshi]

As far as I can tell, there are just six possible reasons:

1) They follow people who look interesting, fully intending to read their tweets;

2) They return all (or most) of the follows they get, simply out of courtesy or because they think that’s just what you do;

3) They return follows because they don’t want to be unfollowed for not reciprocating;

4) They follow people simply to encourage return follows, thereby building their own follow count;

5) They follow people simply to encourage return follows, thereby broadening their scope for DM spam; or

6) They don’t pay much attention to Twitter, so they’re not really sure of their own preferences or of the impact of over-following.