Why though? 🤔 This is highly inconvenient when you wanna find new people to add to your Following list

Especially since it's already hard enough to find the specific content you're looking for on Mastodon.

yeah, that's weird.

Hmm privacy and security may be the reason. A bad actor can create an instance and mine the data. Mastodon is big enough for it to be a realistic concern

Seems like a small thing, but it makes the idea of federation seem a bit patchy.