Suddenly I can’t follow any new people. There are 5 people who have started following me today, but I can’t follow them back. I press the button and get this message:
Could not follow user.
I can unfollow; I unfollowed one person and now I can’t add them back. It worked early this morning, but not now.
I uninstalled and reinstalled and that made no difference. I’m using Android on a 2 year old Samsung phone. I have not changed any settings lately.
Is a Zwift server overloaded or what?
There are just 3 items, not changed for more than a year:
Approve Follow Requests Off
Private Messaging Off
Activity Privacy Public
Notifications: Everything off except Direct Message Alerts & Direct Message Sounds
I’m having a similar problem. I get the dialog box to follow, I click “FOLLOW”, but I doesn’t apply. It started yesterday.
Aha. So the problem is shared and started for both of us yesterday. But the companion app was last updated March 30 and was working until yesterday. So it’s likely not the app itself. The problem seems to be further up the chain … a Zwift server setting???
@Olden_Grumpini and @Stu_Lamonte
Please check your date of birth setting on my.zwift.com webpage. If your DOB makes you 16 years or younger, your privacy options are automatically set to the most restricted setting.
We are locking down date of birth and gender fields. Childrens’ accounts must comply with international regulations for privacy and child protections, and these steps brings us into compliance with those laws.
Age: 72 Gender: Male
Yep - seems to be right! 
Age 58, gender male.
I assume you got the age from the companion app or Zwift game.
Yes. In fact I follow >5,000 Zwifters. I thought I might be up against a max limit, so unfollowed someone, but wasn’t allowed to follow. I’m now getting the message “Could not follow user.”
Not saying this is what is going on with you but I remember reading about someone being “shadow banned” a little ways back and it prevented them from following people.
You can try reaching out to Zwift support to see if that’s the case, but due to the current influx of riders it will probably be a longer than normal time for them to respond.
Well, I don’t think I’m “shadow banned”. I just logged into Zwift and just watched without pairing. I was able to chat with people and I collected a bunch of Ride-Ons while I was sitting there.
I couldn’t add the guy I was chatting with …
So I just submitted my first post here to Zwift Support. We’ll see what happens …
This has also been happening to me the last few days–can’t follow anyone new on the companion app (Pixel 3a).
However, I was able to follow new people at the conclusion of my ride on an Apple TV (where it shows the highlights of your ride, etc.)
Hi Everyone,
Quick update on this… over the weekend we made a change that will limit the number of Zwifters you can follow to 5,000. This change was made to address a few edge case scenarios where the Zwift experience would degrade for users following a significantly large number of Zwifters.
This cap will remain in effect for the near term as we work on a solution for these edge cases.
We’ll be updating Zwift Companion to better inform users when they hit this limit (currently the button to follow is simply missing which isn’t super informative 
)
Ride On 
That explains my problem. I’m an edge case. Might be time for a rename: Edge Case Grumpini.
One person’s “Edge Case” is another person’s “Power User”.
What about when someone that we are not following starts following us? Can you allow us to follow them back - it’s the social thing to do.
By the way, I haven’t noticed any degradation of the experience. 
Hi Wes,
I’m one of those people who follow >5,000 Zwifters. Is there a way you could purge the list of people I follow so that I no longer follow people who have unsubscribed from Zwift? If that’s done automatically, could you purge the list of people I follow to remove those who have not ridden in the past 30 days?
Thanks in advance!
Hi all,
I have the same problem and I have unfollowed a lot of peope, now I’m following 4800 but I cannot add users that are following me (I like following people who follows me), I have the button to add follower but still the same message in companion “Could not follow user”, I think that @Olden_Grumpini posted in the last reply would be great.
Thank you
In the Zwift app on Android i can not add any Zwifters anymore?
Everytime i try to add a new Zwift friend i get the same error “could not add user”
Its been like for the last week or so…
Kind Regards
Kenn Port