Mastodon is, as it stands, less about following large accounts and more about following "regular" people that do stuff that interest you and interact with them. It's easier to have bi-directional interactions and it's much more humane and friendly. A good way to discover people is via boosts, for example.

I joined Fosstodon a few days ago and am really enjoying it. The best way to find people is to search through the hashtags of topics to you're interested in. You can also follow those hashtags too.

My stance is on mastodon: don't try to follow people, follow tags instead. You will find interesting opinions, posts and people that way.

To answer your title question, plenty of people do. I follow my friends there and have lots of conversations. Mastodon doesn’t have a lot of famous people, but I didn’t really use Twitter to follow famous people either.

You might want to try FediFinder (when it’s working, they are dealing with Elon’s changes like the API shutdown) to find your Twitter follows on Mastodon.

I've been on mastodon for 4 or so years ago, it takes a bit of time to build up people that you like to follow, which is really important on mastodon, since they are your algorithm, I find new people from the boosts of people that I know and trust, find new interesting people, and my feed is so full that there is always something going on, and I don't really have a chance to read it all.

I'm also not really into "high-profile" people, so I guess that helps as well.

There are quite high-profile people in my field of work. It's not much, but it is clearly getting better. Also influx of kbin and lemmy content really helps.
And, as others said, tags.
One thing I miss is better ordering. I do not want how twitter orders by hype, but I want to be able to personalize my priorities.

I got on back in November but didn't do much. Once Reddit imploded (sorry to bring this topic up again) I dedicated myself to understanding the Fediverse including Mastodon.

About the same time I got an invite to BlueSky, so I've been comparing the two. BlueSky definitely feels more like Twitter and has some relatively high profile people on it - except they are really interacting with each other and other users in a way they did not on Twitter, probably because it's so small.

Mastodon on the other hand feel far more like a place to meet new people; it feels easier to get a conversation going with someone there, kind of more low key? If that makes any sense?

My hope is enough journalist and news organizations get onto Mastodon to make it the useful service the bird used to be. We'll see!

I have the same feeling, there just aren't enough people on Mastodon (or at least people sharing my interests) yet for it to be that fun to use

I'm happy on Mastodon. I follow some people and some bot accounts, I can talk to people and get replies, and I can vent about my disorders. In fact, I follow one or two other people with the same disorders as me. It's not the same as Lemmy or Kbin, but I like it.

tags are the answer!

I found Calckey better suited for my use patterns. Same people, same discussions, but the features and UI made things feel more right.

Doesn't have the hashtag follow feature, but it does have saved searches (called "antennae") which act similarly, just without dumping everything into the main timeline.

8 never had any trouble finding people to follow on either Calckey or Mastodon, though. I just started watching Local and following anyone that said something interested (and then unfollowing them if that interesting post turned out to be a fluke).