kɜ:ʳ 
INTRO TO FEDERATION:
1. "mastodon" is a piece of software that runs on a server. There's a lot of servers that run it & u can follow ppl on other servers.
2. When u follow someone from another server, your server receives their toots.
3. The federated TL is all public toots that the server receives, ie all of the toots from everyone that ppl on your server follow.
4. ERGO: if u want to see more toots in the fed TL, follow + get other ppl on your server to follow ppl from other servers!
@chr important note for people migrating from twitter: You won't see the full complement of replies on non-local twoots—you'll only see replies that your server has populated for some reason.
If you want to see replies, you'll have to click through to see the twoot on the original server
back in the day when I still spelled it "twoot"