HN and Facebook are entirely different beasts. I have no idea who you are, stickfigure. I can't remember usernames from HN, I can't follow people, I can't curate my feed
not every user submitted feed with upvotes is the same
I am not following them in the social media sense if I don't get a feed of their activities. I can also bookmark people on X, and yet, there's a different "Follow" functionality. They are not the same thing.
You can always find some slight difference. HN is orange, FB is blue!
You absolutely can follow people here. Accounts have profiles and you can look at all their comments and submissions. If you want to make it convenient, there are browser extensions. But I don't see why that matters. You stick around here long enough you tend to recognize the frequent commenters.
And what do you mean you have no idea who I am? That's a choice. Like you, I have plenty of identifying information in my profile. People who want anonymity create throwaway accounts, just like reddit et al.
What is this supposed to mean? They're also two rolling carts steered by a human, and I'm going to make similar decisions for both when I'm e.g. designing a path that they have to move on, or trying to figure out traffic patterns around a construction site.
The people who know it when they see it are exactly the people I don't want making any important decisions. Just be specific and don't use rhetorical appeals to ignorance.
not every user submitted feed with upvotes is the same