@Baxter Sorta~ Most instances keep a blacklist of instances you can't really interact with (in most cases because they breed harassment/just don't moderate shit), some like this one have a whitelist policy instead where you can only talk to a (usually pretty huge) list of instances, with the remainder needing to request federation first.
@Baxter Exactly~
@Thaminga Alright, so instances set up how they want to collaborate with other instances and then it's all set up by the people running the instance. That's pretty good then!