Follower counts no longer decide reach, because the platforms test every post on a few hundred people and promote it if those people like it.

It’s not about followers anymore. It’s about they test your content on a small subset, like 300 people. If they like, it’ll get tested to a thousand people and on and on. So if the thing is good, it will rise anyway. It doesn’t matter if you have half a million followers or a thousand followers or more.