Public Service Warning
Mastodon has a very big surge of new users right now. There's no way to tell if it will be sustained, but at this early point it looks similar to Nov 18 when when Musk pulled the employee purge.
It is very challenging for system administration to accommodate so many new users. If your server starts to struggle, it is not broken and will get sorted out.
We're all in this together. It's our social network. Be patient. What we are building is amazing.