@dan Yes I do the same

I wonder what kind of workflow leads to that perception

me, I generally favorite posts that appear in my timeline, so they're already local and immediately likable, so to speak

I also run into other users I wish to follow as they appear in my timeline, which also conveniently creates a local version of their profile on my instance, that I can also immediately follow

I can see how going out onto other servers looking for posts or people will lead to these apparent difficulties, but why do people find an apparent need to do that? I don't get it. it feels to me like looking for trouble, like setting out to do things the hard way and then finding it's not quite as much fun as anticipated

@lxo I think when you are getting started, I good place to find people to follow is with the instance site itself. This leads to the clunky need to go back to your own instance to copy and paste the username, rather than just clicking through on the other instance.

I'd expect people to get started looking for people on their own instance, maybe on its federated timeline. then they could follow people without going through the hard way. ISTM if something is leading them to visit other instances' web sites, that something could use improvement. I don't use Mastodon myself, only GNU social, and here I hardly ever go to others' web sites. I don't even feel welcome elsewhere (javascrippled websites push me away), and in the odd chance I wish to follow someone from a different instance, I know (or ask for) their address and enter it on my own instance.

@lxo I started my own instance, so that wasn't possible...

that's cool
it's hardly a common situation though
and if you had the skills to start your own instance, surely entering some peers' full addresses isn't a significant technical hurdle to overcome
at that skill level, you might as well have configured a relay to get posts from other instances into your federated feed, and then you could pick remote users from there