It took me embarrasingly long to get a feeling for how Mastodon was supposed to work across instances, and what it means that lemmy, madtodon etc are part of the Fediverse.

I think the “join mastodon” or “join lemmy” rhetoric just obscures how things work. IMO it would be better to describe Lemmy and Mastodon as ActivityPub readers, similar to how there used to be RSS readers.

That is indeed quite accurate and comprehensive.

And as a Dane due to move back after 8 years abroad it feels strangely relevant and slightly alienating 🙃