I’ve never really used it (I’m not very into micro blogging), as someone else said Lemmy is to Reddit as mastodon is to what Twitter used to be
It’s a more complex system of federation than Lemmy, my understanding is that Lemmy is more tightly federated, but mastodon has additional mechanisms to spread posts through the network.
I might get more into microblogging when I add kbin support I might get into it - I’ve found learning enough about something to write code for it often ends with an appreciation for the thing. If that happens I’ll do a similar server experience post somewhere