I’ve not posted much on Mastodon, but I used a couple of hashtags and an interested-based group that automatically boosts any post you tag it in and I’ve gotten some people to respond! But yeah Lemmy and Mastodon are pretty different ways of interacting with people so I can see how you might like one more than another.

tldr; Go to settings and turn on “Automatic Verification”. Only works in Safari and you need at least MacOS Ventura or Sonoma. This also works on your iPhone (mine was automatically turned on!)