You're on a rather large instance which "sees" a lot of other instances. Furthermore, it's a Mastodon powered instance, so it runs smoothly with a lot of other mastodon instances provided there is no blockwar due to political differences. But once you get out of the Mastodon silo and try interoperability with other "projects", the hassle, the breakdown, the repudiation of connections, etc., start. There is a reason I call Eugen Rochko the Dear Leader of Mastodon: He created a silo every other project in the Fediverse has to comply to. And it's no coincidence that there are negotiations running between Mastodon developers and Meta for shared access. Rochko tries to become a Musk and Zuckerberg, only with his own version of social media silo. He's not better than they are, only cheaper and with less money. And privacy is chimera in the Fediverse which is why Zuckerberg will get a lot of new user data especially from people (like me) who don't use his platforms -- simply by sharing connections with the Mastodon run part of the Fediverse.