did y'all sign up with an email address? if so, did you open that account and click the "okay cool you're verified" link?

i know you probably did, just trying to make sure it's accounted for

instances cost money though, and i feel like i very recently saw a thing that demonstrated that, by and large, people do not donate to keep instances alive. there's a few places where that's not true (infosec.exchange over on the Mastodon front, i think, does fairly well) but it's absolutely not a sure thing.