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.
@TheActualBrian @feditips I saw someone on here compare Mastodon to email (I'm sorry I don't remember who!). Instances are just like the email provider you use (Gmail, Yahoo, etc). They're different and have their own rules but they all communicate together. I thought that made a lot of sense and helped to simplify the concept for me.
0.o
That doesn't even begin to describe how it works.
That has zero to do with what I'm saying.
It looks like the Cult of the Open Source (No corporations allowed!!!) has made its choice and missed their one shot.
If/When Meta decides to federate, hide in obscurity or allow yourselves to join a larger world without giving up your data.
Your choice.
It's a pity so many are too scared to see that.
@TheActualBrian @MeganThomasPA
Could you please stop being so nasty in my thread?
People have very patiently tried to discuss these topics with you in a calm way, and you're consistently replying in a very angry and hostile way.
If you know what you're talking about, you should be able to talk about it without being so hostile to folks that have done you no harm.
@feditips@mstdn.social The pot calling the kettle black since the app change was made. Yes the federation is important, but time after time the community has mentioned that "normies" need a lower barrier to entry, and Threads will be that gateway, for my friends, family, colleagues, classmates, etc.
It's not a gateway, it's just another centralised social network owned by Meta/Facebook. You will not be able to move off Threads to another server, and it will probably never federate with most servers.
@feditips@mstdn.social
Definitions for "gateway":
an opening that can be closed by a gate.
a means of access or entry to a placeBy that definition, Threads will be a gateway into ActivityPub. Remember that just because ActivityPub is open, does not mean each server and client software has to implement every single feature or be compatible with each other.
This place isn't ActivityPub, this is the Fediverse.
The idea of this place isn't to promote a specific protocol, it's to have a decentralised social network.
All that Threads will do is drive people onto Meta and keep them there, and centralise as much as possible. It's the opposite of what this place is supposed to be about.
@feditips@mstdn.social Every instance is allowed to do that dude. I can make a mobile app that exclusively interfaces with my CalcKey instance, and expose the features I deem appropriate. There's no governing body saying how the Fediverse has to function, and if the Fediverse thrives like centralized email providers and SMTP. If that's the way the ecosystem goes, then so be it, that's the freedom of this ecosystem.
Yes you technically can, and then others can block you for trying to centralise a decentralised network that thousands of people have built without compensation.
Swooping in and taking advantage of other people's effort is not very nice.
@feditips@mstdn.social Yes, because people blocking Gmail and Microsoft would do anyone any good... In reality, blocking would only be done on the smaller more opinionated servers versus bigger instances with "normies" that would get major blowback.
No one on this network has to care about how instances are run, who runs them, and how they are financially stable. That lack of compensation and success for thousands of instances is directly the fault of the instance owner. If the owner feels better after isolating themselves from the major instances, that is on them.
And I'm being honest, every instance that has more than one user can be considered centralized. No one knows this arbitrary number, and the only people that care are the ones up in arms about federations.
@feditips@mstdn.social @mrhamel@calckey.club That is true, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that this is basically what has happened to e-mail.
Anybody can start their own e-mail server, but the market is completely dominated by big players like Gmail and Yahoo. There are multiple hoops you have to jump through to get them to even accept messages from your server (DKIM, DMARC, SPF), and even then, e-mails from your server are likely to go straight into Spam folders until you've convinced hundreds of users to go sifting through their spam and click "Not Spam" on your messages -- and even then, you might get condemned to the Spam folder forever if an "independent" body like Sender Score decides your e-mails don't meet some opaque criteria and are too spammy. It's an absolute nightmare to run an independent e-mail server nowadays.
Fortunately, that's not the case with the Fediverse yet, but I think it's a reasonable concern that a couple of massive corporations could convince 99% of people to move to their servers and then cut off everybody else.
@minneyar@fuzzyfox.social @feditips@mstdn.social From my experiences sending emails to Gmail users from Linux servers, as long as the emails don't appear to be spammy, have a valid forward and reverse DNS set, and an SPF record set, it works just fine.
I wouldn't say it's a nightmare, but no one simply wants to admin that stuff because Microsoft and Google make it so easy. Microsoft's online email + cloud Active Directory system + Exchange integration, are a match made in heaven for major companies and sysadmins.