Echo or Get bp_follower_ids() ??

I’ve been trying for hours now to simply use the comma separated list of current users following ID’s (trying both documented bp_get_following_ids and bp_follower_ids() as I found in bp-follow-templatetags.php) but var_dump keeps returning int(0). I did <?php global $bp; var_dump(bp_get_follower_ids()); ?> hoping that would simply display the ID’s separated by commas. What am I doing wrong? I have tested by echoing other features of buddypress on this page by echo current user ID and that worked fine.

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