Mastodawn

moonwife Apr 22, 2023

People mention a lot how important hashtags are for discovery on mastodon/fedi, but one thing I never see mentioned is that when you follow or search for an HT, you only get results from posts that have federated to your instance (ie posts made/boosted by someone at least one person on your instance follows).

On huge instances, nbd; but on smaller ones, HTs may seem significantly less active than they really are.

If you like following HTs, boosting HTed posts makes it a more effective feature.

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Ety, Ringer of Bells ^G Apr 22, 2023

@jepyang as a [formerly single-user] small instance admin this was a real challenge.

I ended up peering with a bunch of relays that seemed to have mostly common interests, but there are some downsides there too.

Just getting an up-to-date list of active relays, what they're about, and filtering out ones that include vitriolic instances, was difficult enough.

If the emphasis is adoptability and single-user/small instances, this is really something that needs attention.

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moonwife

@ety Yeah, there are trade offs in every direction. Making relays a more commonplace thing—in the sense of having lots of well-maintained ones for admins to choose from—would help I guess? They’re another thing I think a lot of folks aren’t even aware exists, let alone trying to navigate the process of finding well-suited and active ones.