Try Lemmy, not sure about the whole "followers" count but you can do exactly what you've described on Lemmy today on any topical community or AskLemmy to get yo

Try Lemmy, not sure about the whole "followers" count but you can do exactly what you've described on Lemmy today on any topical community or AskLemmy to get you started. You can ask or start basically any kind of conversation you want and gets very decent engagement