How Widely Do Hashtags Federate?Hashtags are not globally visible
When you follow an account on the Fediverse, that account's server informs your server every time it posts, so you see every post the account permits you to view.
Mastodon (and some other Fediverse software) allows you to follow hashtags as well, but this works very differently. Because the network is decentralized, your server does not see every post in the network. It knows about posts (a) by accounts that someone on your server follows directly; (b) that were boosted by or quoted by accounts that someone local follows; or (c) were fetched to give a complete view of a thread or remote account. When you follow a hashtag, you are only shown posts that your server has learned about via these mechanisms.
This means that you typically do not see all posts using hashtags: the larger your server, the more of them you probably see; on smaller servers, you may not see many at all. It's all down to who you follow, and who other people on your server follow. This tool helps you understand how widely posts with hashtatgs get distributed.
Why does it matter how many posts my server sees?
The short answer is: it might not! It depends on how you want to engage with the Fediverse.
One way that people use hashtags is to discover posts and participate in conversations that are outside their immediate social network. For example, you might browse or follow tags for hobbies, sports teams, regions, etc. Similarly, you might use such tags in your own posts to engage with others with the same interests.
Another way people use hashtags is to organize their posts: hashtags are a convenient way to filter or search, and a hashtag that's not commonly used by other people can be a way to follow some of an account's content without following the full account, as long as the post ends up on your server via other means.
The distribution of posts in the Fediverse generally follows the social graph, so you'll tend to see tagged posts from the people you follow, the people they boost or quote, and so on. Other users on your server will pull posts from their social networks too, so if you're on a server with people that share similar interests, your server will tend to get good coverage of the tags you're interested in.
This may be enough! You don't necessarily need—or want—to see every post made anywhere in the Fediverse, and you may not want your own posts to have that kind of reach. In fact, the absence of hashtags used for harassment can be a sign of a well-moderated server that works to keep its users safe. Harassers may also misuse hashtags to reach their targets, so fewer tagged posts may also indicate that a server is successfully avoiding some attempts at harassment.
The downside of uneven distribution is that it can lead to problems with discoverability: it can be hard to find the people and communities you're interested in on the Fediverse, and hashtags are one way to go about it. The more posts you can see with a particular hashtag, the easier it is to find your people.
Ultimately, the most effective way to find the people and content you want on the Fediverse is to actively work on maintaining your social network.
I want to see more tagged posts
For users
- Search for tags you're interested in on larger servers, and follow accounts that post with those tags.
- Follow a FediBuzz feed: visit relay.fedi.buzz and enter a tag to follow. It will give you a URL; paste that URL into the "search" box of your fediverse server and hit "Follow".
- Use these instructions to follow any one of a curated set of tags via Tagpush.
- Follow the corresponding tag-boosting bot on tags.pub, which will boost posts by participating servers and users into your timeline.
- Follow discussion groups, such as the ones hosted by fedigroups.social, related to your interests.
- Discover or create feeds on surf.social.
- Ask your admin about joining a relay (see below).
For admins
- Follow (yourself, or by making another account) accounts that post with hashtags your users may be interested in.
- Use the FediBuzz Relay to subscribe your server to feeds of specific hashtags.
- Consider joining a relay, which will pull content from across the Fediverse onto your server. See warnings about relays in the "federate more widely" section below.
- See other tips for increasing your server's view of the Fediverse.
I want my tagged posts to federate more widely
For users
- Make sure that tagged posts that you want others to see are posted with Public visibility. Quiet-public, unlisted and followers-only posts don't appear in hashtag timelines.
- Cultivate your social network: all servers where you have at least one follower will see your posts, and your tagged posts will end up in their hashtag timelines.
- Follow the tags.pub followback bot, which will boost all of your tagged posts to other users of tags.pub.
- Join discussion groups, such as the ones hosted by fedigroups.social, related to your interests. These groups will boost your posts onto other servers.
- Ask your admin about joining a relay (see below).
For admins
- When you join a relay, you are opting-in all users on your server to a service that shares their posts widely. Most relays do not inform users or give them a way to opt out. It is important that you understand what a relay does, and ensure that users on your server consent to it.
- Join a general-purpose relay that shares posts with others servers connected to the relay. These relays generally share all public posts from all users, and do so quietly (users are unaware their posts are being shared.) On some relay protocols, such as the one used by Mastodon, full post contents are shared. Open relays share these contents publicly with little access control.
- Join tags.pub, which will boost all tagged posts made by your users. Tags.pub creates a bot for each hashtag boosted, and users will be notified of these boosts: this gives users a way to opt out, but may be surprising or unwanted.