Maybe I just haven't learned enough how things work here, so am I correct that searching for posts only works within the server you joined on, and *not* across servers?

That would seem to make what server you join more consequential, at least for finding content, than is what is being said Out There.

I don't want to migrate multiple times but this server feels a little janky, but it's hard to tell just how consequential the server decision is.

@AriCohn Searching in Mastodon only covers posts which you have interacted with, and posts with hashtags. The hashtag match seems to be exact. The search is across all the federated servers, not sure how server banlist affects it yet.

Otherwise search also covers user profiles. For that there is also https://search.noc.social . With that I found 7 accounts with your name across the fediverse mirroring your Twitter feed.