An irregular reminder that calling this place "Mastodon" has a bit similar energy as saying "I just sent you a GMail."
"Fediverse" (or "fedi") is a better term.
Mastodon is just one of many software projects that talk to each other to create this multi-instance social network:
https://axbom.com/fediverse/
(kudos to @axbom for this fantastic infographic!)
There are blogs, Reddit-like communities, video instances and many more, all part of fedi.
I edited this toot, as there were too many people pointing out it sounded "annoyed" or "scolding." That was never the intention, and I am sorry it came off that way to some of you.
That said, I do believe language matters a great deal: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
I am not trying to convince you to always use one term over the other (I too sometimes use "Mastodon" in that context). Okay, maybe a tiny bit.
But mainly, I am trying to give broader context.
Also, there is no reason to use a single application to access your instance.
In particular, if you mostly deal with public posts, you can do lots of low-effort scripting to read them. (I'm keep meaning to make a bridge to nntp to be able to use something with better filtering/categorization engine~~.)