kɜ:ʳ 
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!
@chr do you have to have an account on other instances to see the toots from that instance?
@backhand nope, just have to be following someone on that instance and you'll see all their toots and some toots peripheral to them (boosts etc)
@chr so is it best practice to simply have an account on one instance, or multiple accounts on instances based on what communities you want to be part of?
@backhand until instances diversify/specialize, i think its probably best to stick with one for the moment
later on, if, say, cybre.space became a programming-focused instance (it probably won't but who knows), and you wanted to be part of that community, then maybe it would make sense!
for now the network is growing both horizontally and vertically, and everyone's just trying to get in on the central discourse before fanning out to their interest circles
@chr @backhand its the discovery problem. Everyone already advertises their email address and whatever other social media handles, but this is too new / not mainstream (yet). But the software / sign up processes is easy enough for normal people, the UI is fantastic (even if a total ripoff) so it doesn't feel so much like compromising for principles.
@tetron @backhand yeah i think the issue is the newly transferred don't really get what federation is about, so they want there to be one central site where they congregate
and heck i dont think the rest of us have really figured it all out either, but we're making progress