When you check a profile of another user you will see the number of people who follows his and who are followed by him but if you click on.that number you can't see the entire list of people. Instead you can only see the ones of them that you just know.

That's alsi by design and that's also an anti-harrassment tool.

Let's check real life: in real life I dont walk around with the list of my friends attached on my neck and neither of you (hopefully) does.

So, if you cannot discover new people by checking who is following who, how can you find and meet new people on Mastodon?

By t-a-l-k-i-n-g, socializing and discuss things. If you boost a post of your friend you are presenting him to all your other friends and so on.

Mastodon emphasizes real human socialization instead of espionnage-style exploration of profiles