mastodon.world is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Generic Mastodon server for anyone to use.

Server stats:

12K
active users

You don't need to use the official Mastodon apps, they're not the best way to use Mastodon. The official apps only arrived last year, and they were intended as "Fisher Price My First Mastodon" things with a restricted set of features.

Third party apps have been around longer than official ones, and include way more features. You can sign in with the same account on all apps.

:android: On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot

:apple_inc: On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona

Random Rage

@feditips do any of them handle threads better than the official client? It's so frustrating to scroll backwards through someone's 15+ post rant

@randomragenet

Tusky includes reversal of reading order as an option in settings.