I mean things are relayed if you ask for them to be. Two cases, pretty much: (1) someone is following someone else, content is asked for by the one server and pushed to the other. (2) You look up a URL (someone's posts, a profile, etc) and it asks the other server for it. Of course you can block certain instances from asking for stuff, or block/mute specific people if you'd like to, so it's not just out there for anyone to grab (except of course that it's the internet, so realistically nothing is ephemeral).

>Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Of course you can be on multiple instances. Just like you can make multiple emails. Same case though: why would you? some edge cases (being able to see multiple local/home timelines for example, even from people you're not following, via the 'local timeline' tab). So yeah, there's people that have multiple accounts, just like you can have a few reddit or HN accounts if you'd like to. There's definitely usecases, but most people just have the one account. Moving is being worked on, it's not 'seamless' by any means, but you can download a backup of followers etc and upload that to another instance, and have your old account forward to the new one (preventing people from using your old handle, and also meaning that if there's a link somewhere they'd know where you moved to).

>Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's too complicated. I'll just stick with Twitter.

Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these questions. If you introduced email or reddit to someone they wouldn't necessarily right away think of data portability, multiple accounts, etc. The onboarding needs a bunch of work, but for basic usage it's really not all that hard.

If I'm on one instance, and some person is on another instance, if that person gets kicked out of that instance (for a poor joke, let's say), do I lose access to all their messages?

From what I gather by your answer, the answer is "Yes". They need to get another account and I need to follow them on a new one, which may imply I need a new account as well.

Further, if I go for a "free speech" instance, I will run the risk of getting blocked (by proxy) by other instances because of what other people do on that instance.

On Twitter, this isn't such a big problem because people don't get banned that easily, but with all these moderators and "codes of conduct" being emphasized for Mastodon, I think it will be a problem.

> Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these questions.

They will have the question of "why do I want this?". One answer to that is "no single corporate entity decides who gets to see what", but from what I understand the whole system is worse. All this complication to fight "outrage" and "harassment" which I don't think most people are bothered with in the first place.