They can't figure out how to solve the issue so they just decided to say it's not important instead of admitting it.
It is growing but very slowly. The reason it's not growing fast is because it's takes a learning curve and the fiat people have a hard time with learning things
Another issue is most people don't like social media because the fiat social media is full of fakeness, so it's hard for them to fully understand what nostr truly is. Most people don't use X and nostr is too much like X except for the decentralization part.
If they removed the bots from X. It would be a bit bigger then nostr but not as much
Followers and following is important because it's a good way to find who others follow. Same with friends list on Facebook. It's awesome looking through people's friends.
The solution is simple. Require stats to follow someone in order to keep the bots down, even Facebook has the friend request feature which is great to keep bots away.