[tekromancr]

Yes to all of those. The only issue is some smaller instances with limited admin bandwidth might only federate automatically with larger, well moderated instances to help reduce their own moderation burden.

If you want to be well federated even with the smaller instances, you need to hang around for a while; build connections within the larger communities; then ask to federate with any smaller instances you want to connect directly with.

[ineedasername]

It seems like there's a lot of friction involved with connecting to the wider ecosystem. You can sign up to a smaller instance but then federating with others may be problematic. Or you can sign up to a larger one, but it seems like network effects might eventually have things evolve to just a few massive instances, somewhat defeating the purpose of decentralization. Or you can host your own, which would be a technical hurdle for many and come with its own burdens.