I’ve just joined Mastodon, and I’m a little confused about the effect of joining a particular server. If I understand it correctly, I can join any server, but then I can search or follow users and hashtags across all of Mastodon?
If that’s right, then what difference does it make which server I actually join? Does the server determine what posts/news I see without searching?
you can follow any user by pasting his name or link into your local search box
searching content is limited to portion of /r/fediverse your server knows. Server knows local content and all content that somebody from your local server follows.
Larger servers know larger portion of /r/fediverse - you can go to them, search there and paste results to your smaller server and follow.