Because you were made a member of it. Joining an organization on UNI follows it in the same step, so it starts appearing in your feed and you are counted among its followers without you having selected Follow.
The two are separate from that point on. You can unfollow and stay a member, and you can leave and stay a follower.
The four ways a membership starts
- Someone invites you and you accept the invitation.
- An owner or admin adds you to the organization directly.
- You create an organization. You are its owner, and its follower.
- You sign up with an email address whose domain belongs to an organization that has had that domain verified by UNI — or your organization's domain gets verified after you already had an account on it, which backfills you in the same way. Almost no organization has this set up, so this is rare.
In every case except creating the organization yourself, you get a notification and an email headed "You joined" with the organization's name.
Following and membership are different things
Following puts the organization's work in your feed and adds you to its follower count. It carries no role and no access. Membership carries a role, and with it whatever that role is permitted to do inside the organization. Removing one does not remove the other.
To stop following
Open the organization's page. The button that reads Following unfollows it, and changes back to Follow. Your membership and your role are untouched.
To leave the organization
Open the organization's management area and go to Settings. Leave organization is at the bottom of that page, and you confirm before it takes effect. Your invitations page carries the same option.
Three things to know before you use it:
- You lose your role and every permission that came with it. The organization and its work stay as they are.
- Rejoining needs a fresh invitation.
- A sole owner cannot leave. Transfer ownership to another member first, or archive the organization. Closing an organization you own covers both.
Leaving does not unfollow. If you want neither the membership nor the follow, do both steps.