May also have something to do with their system.
X "adds" followers arbitrarily. When people realize it, they unfollow them.
Every day when I look at my timeline I see many posts from people I do not follow. When I look into it, I see X added them to say I am following them when I never added them. I then unfollow them. They should have never been in there in the first place. For my small account, X tags me as following about 2 new accounts each day. Now multiply that.