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 A big differencee between our 30040 and a gigantic follow list is that: 
the index items aren't meant to repeat (you don't list the same chapter 15 times)
the list has a natural hierarchy, so that you can split it into cascading sections (the Gospels contain Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

A follow list has no inherent hierarchy (Bob is not a higher-level person containing Susan, Tracey, and Steven). 
 What you can do with follows is catogorize follows, but because the categories are abstract, not inherent, you will inevitably have people you can place in multiple categories, so adding hierarchy to a follow list creates redundant list entries (Bob is in the frens, baking, C++ community, and coworker lists, for instance). Which we already see. Npub lists are incredibly redundant because they most active npubs can be categorized n different ways. Anyone worth categorizing is worth categorizing with all sorts of stuff, that's why counting the number of labels people attach to a Kind 0 would be a truer signal about how information-heavy an npub is, than mere follows.