currently having a weird issue where iris.to (web) is only seeing like 24 followers while Damus (iOS) sees like 80. might be due to Iris'es social graph filter thing. i've got my relays set up to do that filtering for me already though, so i don't need that feature at all. it just wastes space and energy tracking my social graph.
yeah, some of them are not very careful about that. for clients that support backup/restore of profiles, doing that before experimenting with unfamiliar clients is a good idea. but yeah, they should really be asking permission before messing with your relay list.