I must confess that I have never worried about "friending" and "unfriending" people on social media. Maybe because I rarely use the resident tools to track people I keep up with.

Mostly my interactions are sorted into bookmark folders of my own creation, which allow me to keep track of my "core group" and "2nd tier" and I also have one that's "Interesting but inactive" that I occasionally check in on... and then there's "everybody else" whom (I confess) I rarely get to.

One of the things Facebook and twitter DO have that I find lacking on Steemit is the ability to sort people I follow into "groups." I follow some 500+ people, and it's a LOT of work to keep up with them using the Steemit interface... which is basically just "a long list," as you know.

Would I unfollow someone? Maybe for similar reasons as you describe... if someone who "used to be interesting" became a sellout slave to bid bots. Or if they started posting plagiarized or abusive content.