Hmm, maybe I should see the fediverse as multiple loosely-connected Twitter clones, rather than one place maybe? I seemed to have a malformed expectation regarding Mastodon. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

"Mastodon is a decentralized network! Remember, regardless of server choice you can talk to and follow anyone on Mastodon!" -- mastodon.social

I was perhaps misreading the developer's intentions.