@mathew @rolle let me clarify... i do not care so much about followers as about reaching and connecting with the right people. building a big follower base is a big task and not everyone can do it. finding and joining a community of like-minded people (think lemmy c/community or even just a small group of friends that follow each other on mastodon or share the same server) is comparatively easier and interacting within this group is much more manageable for most people. creating such small groups and being able to find them is, however, only possible if a big group of people share the same platform for doing that. that is why federation is important. having 100 small isolated mastodon servers with one weird person on each of them does not help. having 100 weird people on 100 federated servers following the same hashtag or being included within the same community/group of any kind does.