blue teachCan anyone explain what an "instance" is? Is Mastodon an instance?
Mr. Borogove@Blueteach Imagine if there were 100 different Twitters. Each of those is an instance. Local timeline is the one you signed up on, but you can choose to read the federated timeline, I.e. combination of all instances.
@Blueteach "Mastodon", loosely, is the whole federated collection of instances. Mastodon.social is the instance I'm on, mastodon.cloud is the instance you're on
@Blueteach Scary implication 1: user "blueteach" at other instances isn't necessarily you.
@Blueteach instances can choose to unsubscribe from other instances, for example to keep the Nazis out
evilchili@Borogove not a full union though -- federated timeline is all messages from people you follow, on any instance, any reply to those messages, and any message the mentions you, sent from any instance.
@evilchili ah, thank you for clarification
@Borogove it was a shock when I spun up toots.evilchi.li and the federated timeline was empty!