@vital876@mastodon.social Yes, the discovery of the overall network is based on user interaction, such as follows, boosts, replies. This allows smaller instances to exist in a large network without being overwhelmed, they only need to handle as much as their user's can interact with.
That site I linked uses mastodon specific optional API endpoint, that is outside of the protocol. The android clients support other implementation as well, pleroma and misskey at least. It's a hot mess overall.