AJ Sadauskas1d ago
Here's something really useful I've found.

One of the great things about the Fediverse is being able to follow hashtags.

But.

If someone puts up a post using that hashtag, and no-one on your instance follows that person or anyone who shares it, it won't appear in your feed.

This is particularly common if you're on a small or single-user instance.

Here's the solution.

First, follow @_followback

It will follow you back.

And then tags.pub bot then reshare all of your posts that use hashtags.

So if you do a post with the hashtag #Fediverse, then @fediverse will share your post.

Here's where the magic happens.

The tags.pub bot will do the same thing to everyone else who follows that followback account.

So if you follow @fediverse, then you'll get a feed of everyone who uses #Fediverse on the Fediverse.

And you'll see their posts even if no-one on your instance follows them.

And it works for all hashtags.

Just put the name of the hashtag, followed by @tags.pub

So @tech follows all posts using #tech, for example.

Or @news follows all posts using #news

#relay #relays #selfhosted #selfhosting #Mastodon #feditip #feditips #fedihelp
Show threadDroppie [infosec] 🐨    ​
@aj this sounds phenomenal, ta for sharing [how did you discover it?]. am about to test it on my small friendica.au instance... the main reason i left it a few weeks back & returned to masto, was exactly this -- most of my followed tags had few hits there for the reason you explained. 🤞 🤞 🤞
Apr 5 at 12:48pmWeb
Show threadDroppie [infosec] 🐨    ​1d ago
@aj bugger, fell at the first hurdle, as i feared 
Show threadAJ Sadauskas1d ago
@MsDropbear42 Errant space?Try @_followback (at _followback at tags.pub no spsces).
Show threadDroppie [infosec] 🐨    ​1d ago

@aj @_followback sort of yes & no. i tried again simply by going to your OP, within friendica, clicked the link rather than used the search function, expecting it to fail, but to my surprise it took me to page https://tags.pub/profile/_followback per pic1.

i couldn't grasp how to use that page, so clicked its top link, to https://tags.pub per pic2.

noting there, similar to your OP, that i would then follow, eg, @[email protected], i searched that in my friendica search field, which took me to a page matching that, where i could & did Follow it, pic3.

i repeated this pattern for some other of my desired tags, but then the wheels fell off when i tried tags that are more popular, eg, when i tried @[email protected], instead of similarly going to an expected [email protected] page for me to follow that tag, it went to actual people who follow that tag, offering me to follow them [which i do not want] but NOT at all also offering me the tag itself; pic4.

at this point i have stopped, coz... unless i am still misunderstanding something... it's not going to meet my need... i want tags, not peeps, when i try to follow hashtags.

Show threadDroppie1d ago

@frauadmin @wansti Hi again Marek, hope you're well. I more or less stopped using my new account here as per my "final" post to you about the hashtags difficulty several weeks ago. Tonight though, as per this thread, i wondered if there might now be reason to hope anew.

Would you be kind enough pls, when you have time, to review this thread & advise me your thoughts, wrt your server? Thx.

cc: @MsDropbear42 @aj @_followback

Show threadAJ Sadauskas1d ago
@MsDropbear42 I saw a post about it the other day by @evan

So I decided to try a bunch of hashtags with it.

Since I'm on a single-user self-hosted instance, it's brilliant.
Show threadEvan Prodromou1d ago
@aj @MsDropbear42 I'm so glad to hear it!