Jquery ajax – Check if first value is different to second via AJAX

I’d like to check if the first value I get of an AJAX call is bigger than the next ones. Somehow I can’t figure out how to do it. Every 5 seconds I check the value of followers.

let callFollowers = () => {
  $.ajax({
    url: 'https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self',
    dataType: 'jsonp',
    type: 'GET',
    data: {
      access_token: token
    },
    success: (result) => {
      let followers = result.data.counts.followed_by,
        counter = document.querySelector('#counter');
      let splitToDigits = (followers) => {
        return [...followers + ''].map(Number);
      };
      counter.innerHTML = '';
      for (let i = 0; i < splitToDigits(followers).length; i++) {
        let appendChild = document.createElement('span');
        appendChild.innerHTML = splitToDigits(followers)[i];
        counter.appendChild(appendChild);
      }
      console.log(followers);
    }
  })
};

callFollowers();
window.setInterval(callFollowers, 5000);