It seems to me there should be a way to subscribe to announcements that your followers are streaming. That would make it a lot less chatty when starting up (for instance) - You just send 1 request, rather than 1 for each person you follow, which for large systems could run into rate limits very quickly.
That would seem way more logical IMO, than what the current system is.
I’m quite surprised nobody else is wanting this. It does seem the logical thing to do.