INTRO TO FEDERATION:
1. "mastodon" is a piece of software that runs on a server. There's a lot of servers that run it & u can follow ppl on other servers.
2. When u follow someone from another server, your server receives their toots.
3. The federated TL is all public toots that the server receives, ie all of the toots from everyone that ppl on your server follow.
4. ERGO: if u want to see more toots in the fed TL, follow + get other ppl on your server to follow ppl from other servers!
Twitter has always been "the company that never understood its own product".
According to the laws of orbital mechanics, Mastodon can't succeed. We already have a double-star system of Facebook and Twitter, the major and minor component, respectively. Then again, maybe Twitter has acted stupidly enough for long enough that there's a real chance for this to succeed.
Making your own network because you don't like the big ones. Really interesting. Very much like making your own country because you don't like the existing ones.
I hear you saying Trump's presidency is failing really fast now. It sounds exactly as convincing and plausible as it did when you said he cannot possibly win the election.