@lawremipsum @erosdiscordia @darius I know I'm late, but when I check the “federated” timeline on my app I see posts from users of this server along with everybody else in that timeline. My instance has Hometown not Mastodon.
The feature is changeable, I can set my posts to “unlisted” if I want to. But I think users show up in the federated timeline by default unless they modify the default posting setting on their preferences in the web interface.
By the way this instance also has a “local” timeline with just users on this particular instance, but I think they all do.

I'm sending this reply using the “unlisted” setting.