BuyFromEU

I'm bit surprised that no one talked about this yet. What you are experiencing is "not having an algorithm."

To start out forget about the federated and the local timeline. You have to build your own. What you want to do is find hashtags (!) and users to follow.

• There is a list of trending hashtags you can consult
• There is this neat tool: https://mastogizmos.com/hh.html
• Check and follow this account: https://social.growyourown.services/@FediFollows
• Follow this Hashtag: #FollowFriday

Mastodon was, almost, bombarding me with unmarked and VERY unwanted NSFW content. Why?

Sounds like you have the firehose on. If you're feed is set to 'federated' that means you're getting everything from everywhere. Double check and switch to Local (your instance) or Home (just your subscriptions).

"there are a few people there"

Even if you have a Mastodon account yourself, the content and contacts are not limited to Mastodon.

You are connected to a large part of the Fediverse from Mastodon and so you can i.e. also comment in Lemmy threads or send content to Lemmy.

Personally, however, I didn't get on so well with Mastodon because I found the structure confusing and also missed some functions. I therefore moved my Mastodon account to Sharkey and have also been using Friendica for a long time. It also has a better thread structure and many more functions.

Hi, this all comes down to the instance of your choosing and the people and hashtags you are following. I had a very positive experience from the get go.

There are lots of highly moderated servers, because of regulations and possible illegal contents. As the personal timeline is only filled with content of your choice, there shouldn’t be much problems.

You can spice you timeline up with a trendingbot or with starter packs: https://fedidevs.com/starter-packs/