On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero - not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.
I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three
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