@james if you didnt turn demetricator on in settings to hide numbers, then your issue is poor federation.

you cant join the fediverse and expect all interactions to be immediate and synced. your server will take time to become aware of other servers and peers/users. those are not counted until your server is aware of them.

you can speed up this process by using a relay like ours relay.fedi.agency but it will not be immediate ever. for poast to have the federation it does it took over a year and a half and 23 thousand people interacting with others. the more people you have interacting with one another, the better federation you will have