Not sure if people are really into this or if this is on topic for this forum. But Mastodon has released the official app for Android (and iOS for a while already). Mastodon is an open-source decentralized social media alternative to Twitter/Facebook. F-Droid is still in the process, but it will be available there as well.
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I’d argue that it is just as fine to get any other client app for the Fediverse, as there are plenty really great options available.
I’d say that the message should rather be for people to join the Fediverse (of which Mastodon makes up the bulk of users), however there are also plenty great alternatives that might fit one’s needs even better.
So yeah, join the Fediverse! And if you want to, use the official Mastodon app.
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True, but what I missed in the other 3rd party apps was consistency in the UI and features to be in sync with the web version. This official app of Mastodon is really good. I think Mastodon is now ready to take on the masses. And yes, there are other ActivityPub platforms that are great too! 
The problem with the Fediverse is, that while it’s a good concept, it is way too federalised. A concrete example: PeerTube’s federation is an absolute mess. If I sign up on any PeerTube instance, I want to see every video of every instance, not just the ones on my own plus the 5 instances that my own one is following. As far as I know this is also the case for most other Fediverse platforms.
Another example: Some of my friends are on pixelfed.abc.org, while others are on johndoepixel.com. If these two instances don’t federate with each other (which is very likely), I not only would need to create two accounts to be able to follow all of them, but I would also need to post all of my pictures to both instances for all my friends to see them.
As long as this isn’t fixed somehow, nobody will seriously use it, since it’s just unnecessarily cumbersome. It’s already incredibly hard to get people to move to e.g. Signal, even though that’s just as easy to use as WhatsApp (at least I think so, I’ve never used WhatsApp). Convincing them to move to a service even proponents like me think are seriously flawed is just impossible.
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As far as I understand it you have your instance you signup with. Then you have people connecting with other people at other instances. People being connected from these instances automatically becomes your federated timeline, which could include any instance. Unless those instances are blocked for whatever reason.
I think that design makes sense, otherwise if I would create my own instance, I would never show up in the federated timeline. So I don’t think what you describe is happening, unless those instances are blocked.
Maybe it works for Mastodon, but it certainly doesn’t work for PeerTube. As you can see here, most instances only follow a handful of other instances and also only get followed by a handful. This is just terrible UX since there is a 99% chance that the video I want to watch/channel I want to subscribe to is not available on the instance where I have my account.
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I guess this is how they implement ActivityPub in PeerTube. Because with Mastodon you can subscribe to people’s PeerTube activity. And by doing that, the federated link is made and the activity will show up in the Federated timeline for others as well.
Mastodon instances can fine tune this behavior themselves. E.g. they can exclude instances, an example: mastodon.social - Mastodon
It’s odd that PeerTube has a subscription based federated timeline, while Mastodon composes this organically.
After using it for a bit, it’s not that much in sync with the web version.
- No local or federated timeline
- No bot flair for bot accounts
- Cannot see followers and following in the app
- Cannot share a profile URL
- Cannot access my lists
Edit: never mind, it’s all explained here:
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