@ticky Federation with other instances is planned, it's just whitelist-basd instead of blacklist-based.

@dog hmm, okay…

@ticky And to be honest, after having seen enough jerks on other instances in the rest of the fediverse, federating solely to mastodon.social is attractive to me! I know that's maybe not a good thing in the long haul but I genuinely see it as a feature and not a bug. I like Mastodon when it's less stressful than Twitter, and an intentional and cautious approach to federation is one of the things that makes it that way.

@dog I 100% get that, it just feels awkward that what is presumably the #2 most popular instance would outright block me if I made my own for just me?

@ticky It wouldn't block you, to my understanding of how federation works; your awoos would be delivered to anyone who follows you, and you would receive mentions from anyone who follows you.

@dog how do I follow someone on that instance, though?

@ticky Hmm, yeah. Not sure. It might be only available from the "remote follow" UI, rather than via the search bar?