Well, to start, as that post clearly says, it's Instagram, not Twitter. To answer your question, if a profile is set to public and not private, you can see all of their follows and followers without following them. Do you get a notification when somebody you are following gets a new follower? I guess I'm just wondering why some shlub is checking Alex Cora's followers.Because they want to get hints about player movement. Likewise, when a guy is rumored to be on the trading block, people check to see if/when they stop following the team’s account.