@Gynosplice the fun thing about mastodon is it's both. the lack of an algorithm or an easy way to search posts means that your stuff is still accessible by anyone else with an account on the fediverse (mastodon/friendica/pleroma/akkoma/etc, there's a lot) but they may never see it.

the "federated timeline" on mastodon right now has access to hundreds of other servers, due to all the people everyone on my instance follows. so when you post regularly, all of those people can see your post when you post it.

so while all of the people local to this instance does make this area a "small pond" this small pond directly flows into larger waters all the time.