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. Your server only knows about posts by accounts that (a) someone on your server follows directly or (b) were boosted by accounts that someone local follows. 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.
This tool works by querying the public Mastodon APIs on each server selected. No posts are fetched, only counts, and the API endpoint contacted is low-impact.
Server names and (monthly) active user counts come from a crawl of the fediverse that respects privacy signals. User counts are self-reported by the instances, and only public, non-authenticated APIs are used. When randomly selecting small servers, this page avoids the smallest servers to avoid sending unwanted traffic to single-user and other small servers.
All work is done entirely in your browser; no information is sent to the operator of this website. The only servers contacted are the ones selected in the boxes above.
API requests are made without authentication, so no information about your Fediverse identity is available to these servers or this website.
Local storage in your browser is used to remember the hashtag and servers you entered on your previous visit, and is never sent to anyone.
Made with 🌮 by @ricci@discuss.systems . Source on Codeberg and Github