Customer Issue

Customers have reported sudden, unexplained spikes in topic follower counts. Sometimes without any manual changes to topic settings, audience queries, or user data sources (such as SFTP syncs or API updates).

While the issue can be temporarily corrected by "jiggling" the topic settings (toggling a setting off and back on to trigger a recalculation), this may lead to other benign side effects, such as the follower count briefly displaying a negative value.

Environment

• Creator Studio | Topics

• Member Experience | All Platforms

Issue Details

Investigation into these spikes indicates that the issue is likely caused by an internal system process rather than external data changes. Because the standard every-minute reconcile process does not always remove users who were subscribed by mistake, the inflated follower count remains until the topic is manually re-saved or edited in Studio, which forces a full re-synchronization.

Resolution

There is currently no permanent fix, but engineering is working on improved observability and "plausibility guards" to prevent large, unexpected deltas from being applied automatically.

To resolve the incorrect follower count manually:

1. Navigate to Studio > Configure > Topics.

2. Select the affected topic.

3. Toggle a setting (such as Auto-follow) off and then back on, or simply click Save to trigger a recalculation of the audience.

4. Verify the follower count returns to the expected number.

Please check the current status of this issue on the Known Issues Tracker. (Issue ID: FE-32781)