Michel de BreeNov 26, 2022
Trying to get my head around the #Fediverse and #Mastodon instances. I have joined a small specialized instance because people say that’s a good thing (spread the load). There I am in my own bubble because the federated timeline still only has content related to the few people on the instance. If I want to discover toots outside my bubble I have to keep my account on the big general instance. I can live with that but it takes effort to grasp.
Show threadkaukamieliNov 26, 2022

@micheldebree
Not so. You don't ever have to go to federated feed even. Twitter never had that, and it didn't have the algorithmic feed until quite late apparently. People found their people just fine. You can do it too.

Look at tags you are interested in. Look who follows cool people. Join discussions to get to know people.

But I'd recommend Fedilab app. It can pin the local feeds of other servers to a tab. That's a killer feature. It's a bit confusing and a bit buggy, tho.

Show threadMichel de Bree
@kaukamieli Well that’s the thing. The way I understand it, when you follow a tag, you follow it in the federated toots. For example I follow #c64 on my c64.chat account and it has way less hits than when I follow the same tag on mastodon.social
Nov 26, 2022 at 10:02amWeb
Show threadkaukamieliNov 26, 2022

@micheldebree
Ah, no, followed tags should show on your home feed.

Federated feed is not really relevant to this other issue, which is that different servers see different posts, depending on who their users follow. But you can just go to any other server like c.im and search tags there to see what that server sees.

Show threadMichel de BreeNov 26, 2022

@kaukamieli They do, but the home feeds of my two accounts do not have the same hits on the same tag. If it has nothing to do with federation, what could be the issue here?

Edit: ah you are saying that if I want to follow a tag, I should check the same tag on other instances to expand my bubble. That's my point regarding discoverability. Not a complaint, but a complication that not everyone will, or wishes to understand.

Show threadkaukamieliNov 26, 2022

@micheldebree
The issue is with federation, but not federated feed.

Like I said, different servers see different things. That's federation. Servers see things based on who their users follow, like I said. You could compare the results and see what servers the other one you are in does not see, and follow people in some of them?

Show threadMichel de BreeNov 26, 2022
@kaukamieli Yup that’s what I meant. I have accounts on different servers because of discoverability, by watching the federated feed and by following federated toots by tag. I suppose I could do the same with only one account by visiting instances that have their feeds publicly accessible and picking users to follow. But that’s more work and not part of my daily routine.