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Do you want to see more posts about interesting topics in your Home timeline? And do you want your own posts to be noticed by others?
Here's how to do both these things:
1. Search for a hashtag you're interested in
2. On the results page, click the + or Follow button in the top right corner
3. Posts with that tag will start appearing in your Home timeline
4. Follow lots more tags
5. Include hashtags in your own posts, tag followers will then see your posts
More info at https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-follow-hashtags-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse/
p.s. The official Mastodon Android app does not have hashtag following. If you're using Android, I would strongly advise using the third party apps Tusky or Fedilab instead, which do support hashtag following and have a lot more features besides.
Alternatively you can use the website on your phone, it works well too and gets all the latest features first.
If you want the general public to come to Mastodon, that official app needs to give them everything they want without any effort on their end.
Maybe start them in the Federated feed as well.
Having everyone using an official app tends to concentrate power in one place, which makes that one place vulnerable to Musk-type takeovers.
It's safer for the long term sustainability of this place that we use third party apps. Mastodon used to be 100% third party apps, the official app was only released last year.
This is true, but if Mastodon wants to grow being niche, you need the general public, and they're not techs.
The standard for a UI is "Don't make me think," because if most people have to stop and think to use it, they won't start again.
It's about sustainable growth.
There's no point in unsustainable growth, it will just end up in a dumpster fire as we can see on Twitter right now.
The UI on Tusky, Ice Cubes etc is very good, they are available from app stores... I don't see how they are more difficult to use than the official app.
@feditips @TheActualBrian
I haven't found how to follow hashtags though, and I'm using Tusky.
Would also love to add accounts to lists without having to follow them, which someone said was possible, but...
:(
You can follow hashtags on Tusky by searching for a tag, then clicking the + icon at the top of the screen. It's got a little silhouette of a person next to it.
You can't add people to lists without following them. It is on the roadmap, but it hasn't been done yet.
@feditips @TheActualBrian thank you, for some reason that little person didn't show up any of the previous times I tried. Probably me.
Oh okay, I thought the list thing maybe was something that could only be done on a computer and not on my phone.
That would be so great though, sometimes the news just gets to be too much and it's nice to have the option to read or don't read.
Lists of unfollowed users (or muted users) is a popular request:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/6982
I think the original concern was about trolls using lists to share targets, which happened on Twitter, where people were being added to lists without their knowledge. This was why the following requirement was brought in, to give people control over who can list them.
The solution suggested is to still require following, but you would be able to mute them on your Home timeline.
@feditips @TheActualBrian Oh yeah that would work great! Especially posts that take up a lot of space in the timeline.