I spend a lot of time lurking on Lemmy. I read discussions. I don’t post or comment much. There’s no social element to that experience. (This is an indictment of me, not Lemmy.)
I just recently rejoined Mastodon, and there I find myself replying to people’s posts and having short discussions even though I don’t “know” anyone. It’s not “community” at this stage, but it could become that if I continue using the platform that way. And when I made a post introducing myself, there were several comments offering direction toward finding “my people” (a.k.a. community) on that platform. It’s just up to me to make it happen.
This.
And there are options that store the data locally on your phone rather than on a company server. This is the safest option.