Administered by:
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.
@TheActualBrian @feditips Pre-fed-feed is sooooo important. It wasn't until I started just following people randomly that this place got fun.
When I was using the Mastodon app, there was no way to switch.
Little to nothing was happening.
I was also on rando server.
Once I switched servers and got Fedilab, I have control, but I needed to have knowledge about how the back end works.
A vast majority of people don't know, don't care, and won't enjoy themselves if it looks like no one is saying anything because their in their local, random server.
@TheActualBrian @feditips see it's crazy! I joined a big server, but didn't get the whole local/federated thing at all.
Like people kept saying about my games original tutorial... 'this sucks and why should I care anymore'
Right? I did the same thing. Had no clue why nothing was changing, ever.
They're not invested in building a new concept in distributed social media is whatever nerdy people, like us, find interesting.
They want social media that isn't hostile or toxic or whatever they're running away from.
You get one chance to make that first impression and if they're staring at a dead timeline because they're on local and some tiny server, they'll leave.
"They're not invested in building a new concept in distributed social media is whatever nerdy people, like us, find interesting. ... They want social media that isn't hostile or toxic or whatever they're running away from."
This is the problem, you're treating these as two unrelated things, when in reality they are the same thing.
The reason this place is less toxic is because it is on many servers, and because it has various anti-addictive features.
No.
Moderation. That's why. Moderation is why.
Maybe many, smaller servers makes moderation easier, but it does not, inherently, create a better place.
Also, I'M not treating anything like anything.
I'm talking about the perception of average people.
You're getting lost in the weeds.
Trying to find technical "arguments" just to oppose me at this point.
Simple. If you want a mass audience, build for the masses, or remain small and insignificant.
"Maybe many, smaller servers makes moderation easier, but it does not, inherently, create a better place."
In my experience it does. Having human moderators on small servers that you can actually talk to directly is far better than massive billion-person servers with unreachable robots making inexplicable decisions.
"Trying to find technical "arguments" just to oppose me at this point."
These aren't technical arguments, they're human arguments.
"In my experience it does. Having human moderators on small servers that you can actually talk to directly is far better than massive billion-person servers with unreachable robots making inexplicable decisions."
Thanks for agreeing with me!
Like I said, it's not the federation of the server size, IT'S THE MODERATION.
Twitter could do the same if:
They wanted to
They hired enough people
No.
On a grassroots level, where each server is small, the people who run it are more invested and have more direct control over it. That in itself provides better quality.
Twitter can't do the same because it's a vast corporation whose job is to make money for its shareholders. It doesn't care about anything else.
If you want a real world example, who is more committed: a small family that own a restaurant, or some random people at a random branch of McDonalds?
Also the numbers just don't add up for large servers. The average server on here has about 500-1000 people. Let's say 1000.
Even if they had just one moderator, that's a ratio of 1:1000 staff per user.
Twitter has about 300 million users, so to get a ratio of 1:1000 they would need to employ 300,000 moderators. Depening on who you ask, the actual number of total staff at Twitter is 2000 to 7000, and only a small fraction will be moderators. That's why they use algo.
Yeah, you're ignoring reality just to argue.
"are" No. Being small DOES NOT ensure this and you know it.
"can't" No. They can. They don't.
Logical fallacy. I guess you couldn't do this without logical fallacies.
You're disingenuous with a cult like obsession to this place.
This will grow beyond the control of its creators. Deal with that. Try to guide it or get left behind. Trying to keep it just the way you imagine it should be isn't an option, though.