I'm not sure about this - the part of nofollows being bullshit - they have an observable effect. Links to other sites are a key signal for Google that a site i

I'm not sure about this - the part of nofollows being bullshit - they have an observable effect. Links to other sites are a key signal for Google that a site is worth showing. If all links are equal - that is, without any directives like nofollow or ugc - then it's much harder for Google to do this properly due to the existance of comment sections, user posts etc. So observing nofollow directives on links is in Google's best interest since it's a direct signal from the site that "I don't fully trust this link, so don't think my linking to it is an endorsement". It helps search engines understand what links that particular site is linking to out of endorsment, and what links are there for other reasons such as comments etc. I've run tests where every internal link to one specific page on a site is nofollowed. The result is that every page ends up indexed except the nofollowed page. Site owners nofollowing every external link is just a lack of knowledge stemming from a time when it was "best practice" to keep all of your "link juice" internal, which I think you're hinting at with your mention of pagerank which is an equally outdated concept. Agreed that spammers probably do it regardless of nofollows because one or two people might click the links though.