@haikushack @Gargron anyone that runs the Mastodon software on their server, is running an “instance“ of Mastodon. Mastodon.social is one of many instances. Much, like how you can be on Gmail and still send email to someone on Hotmail, you can follow someone on a different instance from your instance on mastodon.social.

Check out your “federated timeline" Those are posts from people on all of the different instances that your instance is connected to.