I'll throw in Reddit into the mix. For deeper discussions about projects, it has a way better interface than Twitter, and also as a "newcomer" you have way better chances if you pick out the right communities. One other factor is probably also frequency of posting.

While my posting cadence of "something interesting" every few months works well for Reddit, that's not something that gets people to follow and engage with you on Twitter.

I got a few really good exchanges on Reddit. But I always feel weird reaching out to people directly afterwards, I feel the platform isn't made for that.

I would not consider LI to be a place to make "new" friends. I consider it a place to help tell people, who already know who I am, from elsewhere, more about myself.

In my case, doing nonprofit/volunteer work has been a great place to make new friends (and the occasional enemy).

I agree, it's more for reminding existing connections that you exist.

Sadly not interested in nonprofit volunteering at the moment, too worried just making ends meet. London’s very expensive these days and wages aren't great.

I find Twitter conversations are just as shallow unfortunately. I do follow a couple of people there - Benedict Evans and patio11, but comments on their tweets aren't any better.

I think your chances of having a good conversation is higher on small accounts in the niche you are interested in.

How do you find those smaller accounts though? When you look by topic you tend to get tweets from popular influencers. And I may sound lazy but I don't like the idea of doomscrolling through Twitter just to find the right person.

Depends on what kind of community you are looking for, for me it's mostly IndieHackers and HN so I often click through profiles on HN comments or if there's a blog post shared on a personal blog I look for their Twitter account there.

After you built up a few interesting accounts finding more accounts via Twitter is easier and less noisy.

Oh, never thought of doing it like that. I'll give it a go, thanks!