I'm not sure if there's a way to get trending hashtags (or other things) to automatically show up from other parts of the Fediverse or if we individually have to follow such things. We can definitely follow people from elsewhere manually if we already know the @ handle @ host. It would be nice to be able to choose to get some external content in a more automated way, though.
some good info on the basics:
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/network/
from there:
"There are various ways your server may discover posts, but the bulk of them will be from people that other users on your server follow.
There is a way to filter the federated timeline to view only public posts created on your server: The local timeline."
gotta find out what other ways our server can discover posts from other servers...
also good to know about reacting to posts on other servers (tl;dr: buttons will bring you and the post back to ours to react, linking to the original):
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/external/#interact
