Retrieves all users who follow a specific account on Bluesky Social.
This is the inverse of get_follows - while that shows who
a user follows, this shows who follows them. Includes robust error handling
with automatic retries for reliable data collection.
Arguments
- actor
Character. User handle (e.g., "username.bsky.social") or DID of the account whose followers you want to retrieve
- token
Character. Authentication token from
get_token- max_retries
Integer. Number of times to retry on failure (default 3)
- retry_delay
Numeric. Delay in seconds between retries (default 5)
Value
A tibble with information about followers:
- handle
Character. The follower's handle
- did
Character. The follower's DID
- displayName
Character. The follower's display name
- description
Character. The follower's bio
- followersCount
Integer. Number of followers the follower has
- followsCount
Integer. Number of accounts the follower follows
- createdAt
Character. When the follow relationship was created
Returns NULL if the user doesn't exist or is inaccessible.
See also
Other api-wrappers:
get_follows(),
get_profiles(),
get_user_posts()
Examples
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Authenticate first
auth <- get_token("your.handle.bsky.social", "your-app-password")
token <- auth$accessJwt
# Get followers of a popular account
followers <- get_followers("neilhimself.neilgaiman.com", token)
print(paste("User has", nrow(followers), "followers"))
# Analyze follower demographics
follower_profiles <- get_profiles(followers$handle[1:100], token)
print(summary(follower_profiles$followersCount))
# Compare follows vs followers for reciprocity analysis
user_handle <- "example.bsky.social"
follows <- get_follows(user_handle, token)
followers <- get_followers(user_handle, token)
# Find mutual connections (people who follow each other)
mutual <- intersect(follows$handle, followers$handle)
print(paste("Mutual connections:", length(mutual)))
# Identify influential followers (high follower count)
influential <- followers[followers$followersCount > 1000, ]
head(influential[, c("displayName", "handle", "followersCount")])
} # }