@seislologist @hereidk
>> I’m literally working out this whole Mastodon thing today like a bunch of other Twitter users, so excuse my ignorance.
<< It's fine, welcome to the Fediverse. Lots of colorful characters here. Hope you find something you like.
>> I’m under the impression that viewing user follows on other servers is generally not possible, regardless of which one you’re on.
<< Typically, yeah- you won't be able to view who other people follow. But that's something that can be managed by each admin as they run the servers and can find out who everyone follows. Some people don't like that so they end up hosting their own.
>> Because I’m new I don’t know what notorious things you’re referring to, but I’m sure I’ll work it all out eventually.
<< Since anyone cam run their own instance, you might come across posts about racism, bigotry, drug use, death threats against specific users, general business advertisements, sex worker accounts, and much more. But this can be moderated/filtered at admin and user levels. I won't begin to list all the servers and what each does as that'll take me too long for a tedious task.