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 - I was just trying to find someone from the mastodon.social/ server using their handle, but they don't show up in search results. Does search work across servers?

@gideonro if you know the exact handle, you can search for that and it'll bring up their profile on your server. fuzzy matching only works for local accounts