Mastodawn

And if you're interested in a hashtag, search for thathashtag at-symbol tags.pub in your Mastodon search UI and follow it there. It will boost all the content it finds with that tag to you.

Martin Rocket Mar 28

@evan Oh nice! @janboehm has a yearly live-streamed event with his podcast @festundflauschig . They once used the comments of one post as the feedback channel as hashtags didn't work. Using this technique, they could make it work.

InarticulateQuilter Mar 29

@evan would that be #quilting@tags.pub or [email protected]?

https://tags.pub/profile/quilting

Katzentratschen Mar 29

@inarticulatequilter @evan It's the latter. If you search for it via mastodon.art, you should find this profile:

activitypub.bot

InarticulateQuilter Mar 29

@katzentratschen thank you!

@evan

May Likes Toronto Mar 28

@evan Is there a reason to do this when we can already follow hashtags?

@mayintoronto one reason is because your friend Evan asked you to do it as a favour.

Another reason is that when you "follow" a hashtag in Mastodon, it only filters the content that got to your server for other reasons.

There are three ways that content arrived: either you follow the author, someone else on your server follows the author, or your server is subscribed to a relay.

tags.pub lets you follow a hashtag globally, not just filter what got to your server.

May Likes Toronto Mar 28

@evan ah, so this would help a lot with say, @introduction for unfederated single user servers.

@mayintoronto yes!

Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦Mar 28

@mayintoronto @evan @introduction and this could give me access to more people in my profession (I find few, right now, using the hashtag #lifecoach)

Paul Turnbull 🇨🇦Mar 28

@evan @mayintoronto This description sounds like following a tags.pub via hashtag is even more limited as it only gets tags from people who’ve opted into tags.pub.

@Chigaze @mayintoronto Yes, it's still in its early stages, but the architecture is made so it can handle more and more content over time. The system is opt-in for individuals, but servers and whole platforms can opt in, also.

Stefan Monnier 3d ago

@evan @mayintoronto Of course the centralization aspect is a bit worrisome, but another aspect might be interesting here if you decentralize it. It would allow to disambiguate tags, e.g. #[email protected] vs #[email protected] vs #[email protected]

Evan Prodromou 3d ago

@monnier @mayintoronto we have three tag-following services right now, and tags.pub is free and open source software, so it's possible to have more. I'd really support that.

Christopher Mar 28

@mayintoronto
People on sites running other systems generally can't.
@evan

bipolaron Mar 28

@evan @_followback @nokings why would you not just follow the hashtag?

@bipolaron

When you follow a hashtag locally on your server, it only filters content that arrived at your server due to following.

So, if someone on the Fediverse posts with a hashtag, and nobody on your server follows them, you won't see the post.

tags.pub is trying to improve that, and bring you *all* the content posted with that tag.

Sean Coates Mar 28

@evan Done; I didn't know about this, so thanks for that.

Reading the replies, it's surprising to me that people don't really understand how tags work here. I think maybe my world view is different because I'm on a single-user instance, so it's much more obvious to me that tags don't always have a lot of reach.

andyc Mar 28

@sean @evan /me goes to convert my hashtag follows to tags instead.

#tagspub

@andyc @sean Wow, cool!

@sean Thanks so much! I appreciate it.

scully Mar 28

@evan I am so confused. I click on that account and am met with a wall of buttons(?) that say Add. There is one that reads "Accept" but I haven't knowingly clicked anything. I don't see how to simply follow. And when I click on the follow account in certain iOS apps I get nothing at all. *shrug*

@rickscully OK. I'll change the instructions. Search for @_followback in your Mastodon server, then click the follow button there.

Ed Wiebe Mar 28

@evan I had questions. What is tags.pub? Why would I want it to boost my posts?

https://tags.pub explains most of it. Presumably someone has to pay for this. Is it just altruism?

tags.pub

@edwiebe So, do you still have questions after reading the home page?

It's a project of the Social Web Foundation. We're a non-profit with the goal of making the Fediverse easier to use. We think that if tagged content connects more Fediverse servers, it makes our conversations better and people's experience here richer.

Development and maintenance of tags.pub is sponsored by a grant from the Sovereign Tech Agency.

Ed Wiebe Mar 28

@evan Honestly, the past decade of social media and, well, everything, has made me very suspicious. The home page explains a lot but the link to the Foundation is very far down at the bottom of the page and without actually clicking it tells me nothing.

@edwiebe So, what you're looking for is more information about SWF, earlier in the page? I can do that. I added an issue here: https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub/issues/15

More information about SWF earlier in the tags.pub home page · Issue #15 · social-web-foundation/tags.pub

Suspicious user asked to know who's providing this service and why. Found the SWF link in the privacy section, but expected more information sooner.

GitHub

Ed Wiebe Mar 28

@evan Yes, it’s difficult for a naive mastodon user to understand this. At first it looked like the kind of scam one seems in the spam folder, SEO, buy likes, kind of stuff. I immediately wondered. I did notice your instance name and recognized it as a very unlikely source of spam. Most of the info on the about page is helpful but still I think doesn’t provide what naive users need to understand what this is about. Obviously, I hope, these are my opinions.

ghosttie Mar 29

@evan @edwiebe I think it needs to explain how hashtags work in Mastodon and what this adds, because I don't think most people know that

https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub/issues/16

@ghosttie @edwiebe great, thanks.

Explain why this is needed · Issue #16 · social-web-foundation/tags.pub

Explain why this is different than following a hashtag in Mastodon.

GitHub

Ian Hember Mar 28

@evan @_followback

Hey Evan.

Done! I posted a photo after following, and used two hashtags. Less than a minute later, I got notifications that it had been boosted, once per hashtag. Each boost was from an account corresponding to one hashtag I'd used.

That seems like the expected behaviour, but I figured I'd let you know what it did in case something seems amiss.

Cheers!

@ihember thank you so much! I'm glad it worked.

Ricardo Mar 28

@evan is it normal than even from a mastodon account there is no followback ?

@rmdes no, it should follow you back. This account?

julian Mar 28

@[email protected] I followed but didn't get an accept or follow back, so I think there's something up on my end! The relay follow also didn't work so I'll need to take a closer look this week 🙂

@julian OK. I use a separate key ID and actor ID for HTTP Signature, so that can throw off some implementations.

@julian I commented on the ticket! Looks like we can both make some changes to make this more robust. I'm going to push and test today.

julian 5d ago

@[email protected] confirming that I am now able to follow the followback bot

Still unable to establish the relay, however, so I opened a ticket on the SWF repo there.

Evan Prodromou 5d ago

@julian OK, I'll take a look!

Evan Prodromou 5d ago

@julian awesome!

Ethan Black Mar 29

@evan Question -- now that I'm following + being followed by the bot, I get a boost notification for each post with hashtags.
That's going to get annoying pretty quickly... is the intention for me to mute the bot after I follow it? Would that work OK, or does the bot ever need to e.g. private-mention me something I need to not miss?

#TagsPub #FollowBack #EverythingOldIsNewAgain

Bob Jonkman Mar 29

@evan

OK, I have followed @_followback, so now the #Hashtags I use will be more widely distributed, to anyone who follows @Hashtags rather than just distributed those instances who happen to have someone who follows me.

And I have followed @bikenite so now I should be getting more #BikeNite messages, rather than just those that happen to come to my instance for other people on this instance.

Seems to me this service already exists from other servers, eg. fedigroups.social - but that's a good thing, because sometimes these services go away (RIP gup.pe)

It also seems to me that this functionality could be built right into every instance software rather than as a standalone instance. We could use an indicator to differentiate regular #Hashtags from these newfangled federated !Groups...

@_followback

Bob Jonkman Mar 29

@evan

(Am having fun following all the #Hashtags I create in my usual posting)

(Am also enjoying the high boost counts my hashtag-laden posts are getting)

#TagsPub

aeva Mar 29

@evan followed! will this only boost my #posts with #hashtags or will it also scoop up stuff i boost or other stuff on my server?

Bruce Elrick Mar 29

@aeva @evan
Based on what I recall Evan saying, it is only interested in hashtags.

aeva Mar 29

@virtuous_sloth @evan I'm asking what exactly I'm #holepunching by #following that bot so that tags dot pub can scoop up those #delicious #hashtags since my server didn't seem to be picked up before via any of the means #outlined on tags.pub

Bruce Elrick Mar 29

@aeva @evan
It follows relays and scoops up tags from them, which makes it useful for people with their own instances who only get hashtags that their follows drop.

Bruce Elrick Mar 29

@aeva @evan
I'm less certain about it picking up and broadcasting your hashtags. I think it will, but I don't know about whether, say, it is able to get those to relays so your hashtags are broadcast further.

Apologies for jumping in without concrete knowledge.

aeva Mar 29

@virtuous_sloth @evan it's boosting my #posts with #hashtags just fine, that's not what I was asking about

Steve's Place Mar 29

@evan @_followback One post, 3 tags, 3 responses from tags.pub!

Ufal Salman Mar 29

@evan Seems like vanilla Misskey is unable to fetch the profile for the mean time, but this idea is cool

https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub/issues/9

@ufal the followback account? I've had a couple of notes on that. Can you add more info here?

Misskey follow doesn't work · Issue #9 · social-web-foundation/tags.pub

hi Evan, sorry for tagging you publicly but I think others might be interested in this. Tags.pub is a great idea, but I can't follow accounts from tags.pub from Catodon/Sharkey (and I guess Misskey...

GitHub

Ufal Salman Mar 29

@evan Sure, will do!

@ufal 🙏🏼

Alan is @cogdog 🇨🇦Mar 29

@evan @_followback It worked perfect. My obscure hashtag showed up @cogdogcooltech

@cogdog awesome!

Alan is @cogdog 🇨🇦Mar 29

@evan But here is a concern or maybe I am missing something. Every time I use a hashtag I get a boost notification from its account on tags.pub. This is excessive noise. It puts a burden on having to put a mute on each account?

wakest likes your bugs ⁂Mar 29

@cogdog @evan yeah this makes Tags.pub totally not usable in its current form. I was gonna report about this situation too after enabling it for a few days. Now my boost count is completely off too so if I make a post that ends in 5 hashtags it makes it look like this is a more popular post then one that has 0 hashtags.