Am I missing something? If I read it correctly, it means the reader has to opt in to communicate with the author. That isn't bad if it is their choice. It's when they don't opt in and the author decides to 'communicate' their opinions in a way the reader would rather not receive, then it's a problem.
It's bad because even though one or more connections to author had to be made by reader -- the new features changed those fan-follow-favorite-fan connections readers had carefully organized the way they wanted. Kind of equivalent to their going in and deciding goodreads to merge your "wishlist" and "to read, not bought yet" shelves to their default "to read" button in order to inflate the want-to-read statistics to authors. The change from goodreads standpoint was supposed to increase the "followers" statistics for authors (some sites, advertisers, review services and even publishers look at number of author followers).
Like the huge Q&A button in book pages now -- anything on your feed from a "followed author" now has a large colorful "from a followed author" type of thing plus their interactions with other readers also show obnoxiously displayed (many readers see that show up and don't go to feedback group for an explanation and instead click to unfollow to get rid of more noise on their feed).
From author comments various places, turning fans and friends into followers isn't working well because readers see some unchosen author on the reader's profile so click to break connections until that obnoxious
And oddly got rid of visible "favorite" tyoe of menu options; the most visible change being that author you friended even though never read are now advertised on your profile as a followed author rather than just a friend).
They still don't have an exclude gifs from feed and reviews feature although they assure us someone is feverishly working on it. The follow is better than the fan button that was only offered before in that it would ALWAYS put the author into your favorite author list, where follow does not.
Hah! Get rid of GIFs? No, no, no, readers have "overwhelmingly" told goodreads they want more crap in their newsfeed like changing all connections (fan/favorite/friend/follow) to an author so that when that author's posts/activities hit yiur feed there's an obnoxious button saying they are a followed author (hey, we don't even see that for top friends or goodreads staff posts).
Like the huge Q&A button in book pages now -- anything on your feed from a "followed author" now has a large colorful "from a followed author" type of thing plus their interactions with other readers also show obnoxiously displayed (many readers see that show up and don't go to feedback group for an explanation and instead click to unfollow to get rid of more noise on their feed).
From author comments various places, turning fans and friends into followers isn't working well because readers see some unchosen author on the reader's profile so click to break connections until that obnoxious
And oddly got rid of visible "favorite" tyoe of menu options; the most visible change being that author you friended even though never read are now advertised on your profile as a followed author rather than just a friend).