The only mastodon instance that I can federate with so far is qoto.org ; all other instances, if I search for, brings up my username i.e., [email protected] and allows me to follow. But then, they state, “request sent”. In lemmy itself, I do not see anywhere I can approve such requests. I think friendica works, but have not had enough experience, and it is not a mastodon instance. I also tried to use pleroma, but pleroma too has the same issue, i.e., request sent and that’s it.

Mastodon client has a better designed UI, but it does not support multiple accounts. If you are happy interacting with a single Mastodon instance, I’d say it is a very good app.