I'm the same way - I just signed up (again) to the main mastodon.social server and realized I have to have a separate account for each server I want to be a part of? I'm just confused at this whole thing.
You can follow people on any server that yours federates with, but if you want to show up in a particular server’s local timeline and possibly see local-only posts (if the server has been modified to allow this) you’ll need an account on that server.
Thanks - that's not super clear to me (as a new user). I tried finding another server via an aggregator posted here and stumbled upon qoto.org. Seems like that needs its own account. Do I not get to see who posts from that server (qoto) on mine (mastodon.social)?
I wasn't able to join qoto so I gave up. The join screen never got past the display name/email/etc form but also showed no error. (This is with the official iOS app, I can only assume it's no better or worse on other apps).
Think of it like a cross between Twitter and email. You can see what the local users on your server are talking about, but you can also contact users on other servers run by entirely different people.