Something people have been taking about since 2017!!!
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1589
And Gargon(Mastodons maintainer) just added relays support and called it a day.
While the main issue still isn't fixed, none of the official Mastodon servers use relays, so discoverability is still crap.
You can't browse other servers timelines
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1053
And can't even backfill toots from accounts(you can't view toots older than the server itself!!!!), This is absolutely ridiculous
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14017
These issues are unfortunately predictable, and it seems Gargon won't fix them any time soon.
Its kind of funny that in Mastodon(basically Activitypub at this point) a federated platform, starting your own server is almost impossible unless people actually know you outside the platform, your chances of growing inside the platform are basically zero.
You won't show up in other instances search unless someone from the other instance follows you.
Even if you reply to users from that instance and its users liked your toots, you still won't show up in the instances search, its amazing.
Heck, even Matrix, a chat protocol has better discoverability than Mastodon, user in rooms I'm in will show up immediately in my servers search.
Its not a federation problem, its a Mastodon problem.
- show up in search here is meant as in showing up by just typing your display name / username without the server address, because no one knows which server you are in.