Re-posted from other thread to join the conversation here.
Hi @IslaHF - waving to you from 
I totally agree - exposure to alternate views and cultures is critical for digital citizenship. However, over the past years I found the toxicity of the Birdsite exceeding the value to be gained from diverse opinion over there.
With 7.5 million users in the Mastodon network - there is a lot of diversity with a multitude of sites all interacting with each other. The Birdsite is just a micro-blogging platform, but the fediverse is a diverse array of technologies including blogs, picture sharing, event organisers, video sharing enabled by the Activitypub protocol that has many genre’s of communication all interacting with each other. We’re not silos, but rather a network of networks, reclaiming the Internet for our citizens. I’ve found it way more exciting and enriching than the Birdsite ever was 