Things are a little more complex. When you select some people, their contacts are merged, randomly shuffled and then capped to 500 (too avoid a too long list). So I cannot just show the count; with one or two contacts, the max is already reached, and the user would find the thing weird. I could find out an alternative way (e.g. 100 random contacts per user), but I don't think we have any big blocking issue here (indeed, giving the count might raise doubts about who to select and so create friction), and anyway it is temporary.
Discussion
How about a real
Time “follows counter” as you opt into to copying follows.
Each time you hit “follow follows of npub” the follows counter increases by 100, or whatever you math returns