I’ve set up a couple of single-user instances of fediverse apps (Mastodon, Lemmy). With Lemmy, I can post/comment to any community/thread I want that is federated, but I can’t seem to do that with Mastodon.
With that being the case, how does the content I post on Mastodon get shown to people on other instances (I know replying works differently). I feel like any top-level post I make on my instance is basically like shouting into the void, correct?
Also, if I were to set up a Pixelfed instance, would I have the same problem where my content doesn’t get shown to anyone (except those that follow me?)
I don’t think that this contradicts my statement.
Many people end up on tiny servers or spin up their own server and wonder why there is nothing or only a tiny amount of content in the federated timeline. If you already expected this, good.
The content is also no problem:
Both will fill the global timeline quite nicely.