For those of a certain age (from the UK), who had children in the late 70's mid 80's, do you remember this theme tune inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=JYOnDjP… TV Theme Song (with Lyrics)
@GeePawHill I discovered the most interesting people by subscribing to hashtags. I would never have found specialists for lichens by boosts of people only. It's great if you are interested in more nerdy issues.
@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.
I never use hashtags on Mastodon since I forgot that they were used in Twitter. They are not used in Telegram. In case of Russian mastodon there are 2 bots that boost your posts if they are written in russian. I have no idea how they are boosted if they are written in English and how, let's say, a person would find somebody to follow in Mastodon if he only registered and wants to find something to read and interact with.
@Sevapopov I use hashtags because I and others follow them to find specific content. Some people block things like the name of the president to avoid seeing it. They are my favorite tool.
@Sevapopov AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.
@Goodlucksil Isn’t that wild? I did NOT expect that. But that’s perfect for my purpose. I’ve edited the post to explain why I made this request. Thank you!
@futurebird Now, that’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered! As a performer, my main use of Mastodon besides playing games is to post “Look at what I will be doing“ and “Look at what I did” 😂 … and “Look at my cat,” of course.
@futurebird (I favourited and boosted this, but given the content of the post, I feel like that could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive attack. It isn't meant to be, I have nothing of value to add to this, but I completely agree with the sentiment expressed.)
Also, probably very few people will find this interesting, but the latest campaign in not another D&D podcast lampoons this kind of social media influencer with a Social Media Warlock (derives her power from her social media following.)
@futurebird I, too, like replies more than anything else. Though I often find I have nothing productive, useful, or fun to say. So the favorite button is just "i liked that" and the boost is "my friends will like it too".
@futurebird "Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies ..."
Me too. Some if this is valuing dialogue.
And at a slightly different angle I'm getting interested in "What we know" as in "we the folk here and now". So "what is our common knowledge or combined knowledge?".
@futurebird That’s just how I feel too. What I like here are the conversations. I’d rather exchange ideas with a few interesting people than generate large impression counts. I’m in no way opposed to promotion—I hope this medium also gets my music out there too. But it means more to me to know a few people listened and had thoughtful responses—or that one performer would like to play it—than that thousands passively know it exists. @meganmariehart
@futurebird completely agree with you ! That being said I don't reply that much even on here because I never know what to say (and maybe because years of other platforms have ruined the way I connect with people online)
@futurebird agreed. To me, a post that elicits even one relevant reply is more "successful" than a post with a zillion likes and no replies. This medium is built for conversations, not just broadcasts. I sometimes start following someone with posts on a topic of interest, but then unfollow them again because they're 100% broadcast. Missing the point of an interactive medium...
I think about “engagement” differently on Mastodon. Before the Elon-gation of Twitter I had more than 12k5 followers there (I left at that point!) Here I have fewer than a quarter of that number, but I feel far more engaged. People scrolling past one’s Tweets without even glancing at them counted as being ‘seen’ — a meaningless statistic!
@KimSJ I feel the same way about engagement statistics, they’re useless to me! Mastodon is great and fun without them. However, I was thinking that maybe for someone who hasn’t made the jump yet, some numbers could be an incentive, just because they are so used to them.
(Nobody actually asked why, but I imagine someone must have thought it.) Curiosity is one reason, the other is a recent offline discussion about whether we are hindering a more wide spread adoption of the Fediverse because we dislike advertisements. It’s possible that brands and “influencer”-type people aren’t getting the kick they’re used to from the Fediverse because there are no metrics showing how many people have seen a post. Perhaps it’s different with your own instance – I don’t know! 2/7
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that people would want to test the waters by creating an account on an established instance before committing to setting up their own, even if they have the necessary knowledge and funds. I think people have become accustomed to the insane numbers on commercial social media: millions of views, thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. (I have never been part of this; my profession is too niche. Classical music accounts for just 2–5% of music sales, 3/7
… and opera is primarily a live art form, so its market share is so small as to be essentially unmeasurable. I never bothered to find out how many people I reach vs how many interactions a post gets. I really couldn’t care less!) Brands and “Influencer”-minded people, even people just used to commercial socials testing the fediverse might feel like it is not working for them and leave again, so I was wondering about the *potential* reach of a toot. 4/7
I feel like I get more meaningful interaction (and perhaps even ticket sales!) from a Mastodon post about an upcoming show than from posts on other social media platforms. But a “feeling” dosen’t help when trying to convince people to join. Or to get active. My current theater @staatstheaterdarmstadt is on here since 2022 – zero posts! I would like them to get active or even set up their own instance. I think every theater should have its own instance! It can’t be more work than FB and IG. 5/7
All theaters have websites. I’m not tech-savvy (my husband takes care of that for me), but it seems to me that if you have a website and domain, setting up a Mastodon server can’t be that hard. Perhaps it’s even possible to run it as an outlet only, then they wouldn’t have to deal with moderation. I think every publicly funded entity should have a presence on the Fediverse instead of commercial social media. (Or at least in addition to.) My experimental toot is meant to create an example … 6/7
… to demonstrate that Fediverse posts are worth the time and effort. Perhaps there is also an argument for a feature request: maybe there should be audience metrics for toots?! Though I imagine that could be difficult due to Federation. Again, I have no idea if one already gets numbers and insight by running an instance.)
Perhaps we can move beyond numbers in the long run, but for now, I fear people enjoy them even if they gain nothing from them. Kinda like a game highscore, I suppose.
@Kirsty The thing is this: few people complain here about posting about what you do.
There are instances like .art that seek creators who post about what they do.
What people do NOT tend to react well to is the language of avdertising. This can also be about what you do (e.g. LinkedIn), or specific events and services.
What @meganmariehart gets 100% right is behaving as a human being with a job she shows passion for, where she will show what she does.
@staatstheaterdarmstadt Before getting them an own instance, let them fill their account! Without communication, no followers. Mastodon prepares an entry for newcomers where they can find local instances instead of the one big. They can move at every moment. My experience with social media (I work professionally with these): With much less followers you get much more interaction and relations to your audience in the Fediverse. But only if you are communicating actively. The ratio
@staatstheaterdarmstadt Even if you don't want actively post you could have your RSS feed go into your Mastodon account. Then you just need to check notifications for comments and toot-toots.
I'm a novelist. I enjoy Mastodon as a water cooler experience with people in my various communities, with hastags being useful. Not interested in trying to flog my books here, or seeing any others who do so.
@metalbrawler I wanted to test the potential reach of a post without hashtags, basically just for the sake of discussion. My home theater has a Mastodon account since 2022 but never posted anything! Perhaps I can convince them to get active if I can show them a posts potential, and maybe other theaters and artists will join. Fingers crossed!🤞 Thank you!
Edit: oh, my instance only had your first toot. The other 6 appeared only once I replied here. Kinda ignore.
Original: could you edit this toot when you're done? I'm interested, but if I bookmark it, it'll just go into the how-come-it-has-not-toppled-yet pile of to-reads :-G
This entry was edited (Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 9:12 AM)
I once run an experiment similar to yours. I asked people to boost a toot with a URL to a webserver I controlled, no hashtags either. It got <3k boosts. Yours will probably get similar numbers. At that point, IIRC, the Fedi (or was it just Mastodon?) was ~2M accounts, so it reached ~15% of the net. I wrote abut it here:
Yesterday1 I did something that I don't know how to qualify. At the beginning I was just playing a silly thing where I
registered a new domain on a dynamic domain service. I set up Apache on my home s
But hashtags are the best way to reach people. You mention a theater. They should post with hashtags of their region of influence (city, province, etc), the type of œvre (opera, music, etc) and maybe a couple more. They should sniff around until they find the right ones. I wish there were tools for that, hmmm...
@mdione I've just finished reading your blog post. Very cool, I wish I had read this before making my notifications useless (and they are now!) It seems that the Fediverse is not the best place for spontaneous experiments! I’m not sure if the idea was so bad that I should delete the post, or just wait! Think I’ll wait
Had several questions about how the main "Home" feed works on Mastodon. Here's what it shows:
1. All posts from all accounts you follow in chronological order, newest at top 2. All posts shared by accounts or groups you follow 3. Posts that use hashtags you follow in chronological order, newest at top
...and that's it, there's nothing else on your Home feed. It doesn't push anything else at you, it doesn't hide anything from you unless you ask it to. No algorithms, no ads.
That's a great question! It's interesting to see how different strategies impact reach. I'm really curious about your findings—what have you noticed so far? 😊
@maharanisantoso Waaaaay more interactions than I expected! Most of them have been positive, but I also had to learn that bursting out of my own comfy bubble exposed me to not-so-nice people I didn’t even know were on here.😸
I can't see your post and am way to what ever to read all the rest of your 🧵 ..
😎
Not sure what you want to achive.
Yes we do have some federation statistics in at least some of our backends. friendica servers for example display the amount of platforms, server and people they found in the fedi.
Than there is the part that we don't like the standard fashion influencer who treat us like sheep to heard or cows to milk.
Of course there are business models to think of, but there are a whole lot of middle men that need to jump on the train. An important part of the enshitification talk by @pluralistic is about all this. No clicks you can buy, no algorithm you can buy, no data you can buy to groom your victims.
Like to say, we created this for us and people like you. ❤️
@jesuisatire Fair! Thanks for the reply! (I’ve been wondering about the reach of a post outside of hashtags, and whether this could be used as an argument to encourage theaters to join the Fediverse. My current theater is on Mastodon but has never used the account!)
rubbish, especially young people. What's missing in the Fedi are local connections when you depend on real visitors. Hashtags don't work satisfactorily for this. Our groups are only boosting bots. One reason why the museum for which I unofficially do storytelling is officially on Facebook and Instagram: it is that that's where the real visitors are. I can only encourage people to focus on communication rather than numbers. But this requires people power within the institutions.
@NatureMC Plus, I would like to add, it takes time to build your audience since you don't get any "help" by inbuilt algorithms. On the other hand, you don't need to try and understand how the algorithms work I think we will see more people joining open platforms in the long run. When you're socialised with the numbers game, it can be hard to re-learn and focus on the interaction.
Like many others, I saw your boost without any hashtags.
I usually forget to use hashtags and often end up shouting into the wind. But it is ok, I’m as introverted on-line as in person. A large response would likely overwhelm me - 😀
I love what your end game here is; getting theaters involved in the Fediverse. I suspect that the metrics you're asking about are available to those running an instance. Otherwise, how would "Trending" be established. I think you need to talk to someone running their own instance. I think a good place to start would be fedi.tips/
the underlying protocol of Fediverse is not dependent on any tags. strictly saying it does not have tags at all. it works like email and delivery depends on user addresses ;like username+servername. if a connected user reposts or comments some post in Fediverse, there's a chance that his followers get a copy if the original post too, so posts spread across trhe different servers on Fediverse. some platforms (like Mastodon) allow subscription to tags and some filtering on tags. others do not offer that features. but tags often may be used in seatch engines on servers and people may sort out messages with tags for easier search.
@iwein @metalbrawler Yes. I play Oxygen Not Included, and I post threads about my play. I do add the tag, # oxygennotincluded, so my followers can filter it.
Maybe this works with content warning already, and we could theoretically simply use another tag symbol (if it's not recognized as a hashtag, it meets your desires)
For example &fediFunctions is very filterable to avoid post like this and it's not recognized as a hashtag. We do need to change habits for it, and that's hard.
And it can easily annoy or inconvenience people as well. Not sure what a screen reader does here, but I'm pretty sure it's not great.
@iwein @GeePawHill @metalbrawler I kind of wish for hashtags that aren't searchable, but usable for this purpose (I guess plain words would do, but that feels a little less directed). I do not *want* my posts to be findable by some hashtag, but this is a good use of them.
@geonz Okay, my bad, not idealy worded. I explained my intentions in a reply thread later on. (In short, I want to convince people who are still fixated on numbers to join the Fediverse.)
I've read your original thread and many of the replies (including some of the rude ones).
I'm sincerely curious about something, though, and if you've said I missed it. Is there a downside to using hashtags that I'm not seeing? Maybe not a hashtag soup, but just, say, "# opera" at the end?
@naga Other than it eating into the character limit, I can’t think of any real downside. However, if someone were to set up their own instance, they could adjust the character limit if they regularly need more space for text.
About the only time I use hashtags is for my Darkover writeups (I do not call them reviews):
* (hash) Darkover so people can find, subscribe - or block! them
* (hash) bookstodon so the Bookstodon bot catches and boosts them.
If the English of a post is littered with Blue Words, my eye will usually skip over it as I've come to expect such posts to be unusually self-important.
@foobarsoft For posts about performances I usually add 'opera' and 'operaSinger' so people can filter me if they want the browser but not art. Then the work we’re performing, the composer, the city and if I have enough room the region. If I just blurt out a random though, I don’t tag them.
Like many others, not boosting or quoting, but commenting here to add to the count. I've now seen this boosted into my feed by two different folks I follow.
Your post was boosted into my feed by someone I follow. For what it's worth, I think the thing people trained on other social media struggle with about the Fedi is that it's not instant. A post on the Fedi doesn't "go viral" and blast through to everywhere in nothing flat. It burbles on for days, sometimes months, as gradually daisychains out from where it started. So they feel they've had no reach or no interaction, when really they just stopped counting too soon!
@virtuosew That’s a very good point! Sometimes, I get likes and boosts on posts that are years old. I guess theaters that want to publicise upcoming performances would have to post more in advance. The ability to edit posts has helped me a lot when there have been cast changes. I also quote my own posts when I want to add something to a performance I have already posted about.
@metalbrawler It’s harder to abuse hashtags here, because if you spam hashtags people care about they will just block you without a second thought… but that makes the right hashtags super valuable because you can quickly engage with your specific community.
My God. What a genius move, to have such a powerful performer bust out that monologue on the fly during an intervew. Hats off to the camera operators and director as well, who shot it so well. The in-house audience will probably remember that experience forever.
Thanks for sharing it!
This entry was edited (Friday, February 6, 2026, 11:27 PM)
my mom once had a dream that she was going door to door to ask for food with her young children in tow, turned away, back to the streets. She *almost* understood for just a moment what it would look like to be immigrants in an unkind land.
to my mother’s credit, she did teach herself Spanish after this experience. She may never question her religiousity or nationalism, but her belief in loving everyone like Jesus did is what prompted her decision to learn Spanish after that dream.
"For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, With self same hand, self reasons, and self right, Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes Would feed on one another."
and
"but chartered unto them? What would you think To be thus used? This is the stranger's case, And this your mountanish inhumanity"
how nothing ever changes and bigotry remains the same banal evil it always was. Such a good reminder that we could all be the unwanted‘immigrant’ given the right circumstances
@mim54 There have been countless evil people throughout time who know the power of scapegoating in order to elevate themselves and exploit their followers. You'd think the ones who call themselves Christians would remember their savior's plight.
I really like such historical perspectives. I also like the part of Plato's Laws where he says that the rich shouldn't have more than 4 times what the poor have otherwise social unrest will follow. He said it more than 2000 years ago.
Reminds us that progress is not inevitable, but is a constant struggle. In some ways, we actually regressed compared to some previous civilizations
The full interview with Sir Ian is here on YouTube, in proper landscape format.
(Prior to delivering the soliloquy, he goes on a tangent involving the tune "Some Enchanted Evening" by Rodgers & Hammerstein, which is also well worth watching.)
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
@geppiegep This is why I still teach Shakespeare to my students, even though one complained at first that he was a "dead white guy from a long, long time ago," and why I make certain we watch a performance and not just read it.
Mate, saw this and loved it. Such quality and in this seemingly most forgetful age, we would do well to listen more, to longer form and read in greater depth. THAT’S how we become better people. Simple understanding and balance, over quick and heady choices
this is also a great reminder of why conservatives hate history and art, history to teach us this evil of hatred of others has always existed, and art to stir in our soul that it can and should be overcome. Great share, Ian McKellen is an amazing man
Thanks for your reply, that's more than reasonable. I'll remove my comment, and that being the case, thank you for sharing such a treasure with everyone here (and wading into such a tedious cesspool as reddit to do it.)
Americans are marvelling how a speech about welcoming immigrants could be written so long ago, in the 1500's. Honestly, in the Old World, this is nothing. We have stories like these from thousands of years ago. They were all written down in a thing called The Bible. You kids should read it.
@ProjectFearlessness @JustinMac84 Leviticus 19:34 "But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt"
not exactly an expert on this, but the argument Shakespeare (enlisted as an expert in getting mob scenes past censorship) puts into a fictionalised More's mouth seems basically to be that it is really only bad to attack the 'strangers' because the king has granted them hospitality. Thus to attack them is to run against the king's word, who was ordained by God. So the speech basically argues in favour of obedience to a ruler perceived to be the natural leader of his subjects...
UN rights chief to EU: Hands off human rights law: 'It starts with migrants, but it can quickly go to other parts of the population as well' euractiv.com/news/un-rights-ch…
GeePawHill
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •UnitedWeStand🇪🇺🌻🫂
in reply to GeePawHill • • •But for some IT IS easy to follow certain Hashtags they are interested in.
Petra van Cronenburg
in reply to GeePawHill • • •@GeePawHill I discovered the most interesting people by subscribing to hashtags. I would never have found specialists for lichens by boosts of people only. It's great if you are interested in more nerdy issues.
@meganmariehart
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to GeePawHill • • •iwein
Unknown parent • • •@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.
@meganmariehart @metalbrawler
Amateur Human
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •everton137
in reply to Amateur Human • • •Vsevolod Popov
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •David Scott Moyer
in reply to Vsevolod Popov • • •Patrick O'Beirne
in reply to Vsevolod Popov • • •AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.
Goodlucksil
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Goodlucksil • • •leberschnitzel
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •🟥 Eveline Sulman 🇳🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •George Saich
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Simon Brooke
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Simon Brooke • • •stux⚡️
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies not likes or boosts.
A good post spawns a million threads and subthreads.
However, I'm on social media to ... socialize (crazy right?)
People who view social media as a publicity tool don't reply to posts, they don't even read their own replies. It's like they aren't even here.
Sad that on places like X/twitter replies were seen as a negative: a sign that people were angry at you. Dysfunctional.
reshared this
myrmepropagandist, David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*), David McMullin and Irenes (many) reshared this.
Claire, The Ultimate Worrier
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird @futurebird well lots of replies with few likes and boosts
it kind of annoyed me that "ratio" shifted meaning to just getting more likes than someone after awhile though
John Tinker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I can see it either way. We are like little neurons, making our little decisions as we go. Probably doing the best we can, considering.
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •… and “Look at my cat,” of course.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •(I favourited and boosted this, but given the content of the post, I feel like that could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive attack. It isn't meant to be, I have nothing of value to add to this, but I completely agree with the sentiment expressed.)
Semitones
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •As someone with a large™ following, do you have any recommendations for dealing with notifications?
I've heard several times that creators that seem to be pretty good have trouble dealing with all the replies on Mastodon, specifically.
@meganmariehart
Semitones
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird
Also, probably very few people will find this interesting, but the latest campaign in not another D&D podcast lampoons this kind of social media influencer with a Social Media Warlock (derives her power from her social media following.)
@meganmariehart
Peter
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Stefan Bohacek
in reply to Peter • • •@sarble @futurebird
Great way to put it! And I agree with both of you. Obviously it's a personal preference, but a like/favorite/boost can mean anything.
I'd rather know:
Did the person really like this? How much? What did they not like? How can I improve?
@meganmariehart
Starhawk
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I, too, like replies more than anything else. Though I often find I have nothing productive, useful, or fun to say. So the favorite button is just "i liked that" and the boost is "my friends will like it too".
skua
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird
"Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies ..."
Me too.
Some if this is valuing dialogue.
And at a slightly different angle I'm getting interested in "What we know" as in "we the folk here and now". So "what is our common knowledge or combined knowledge?".
David McMullin
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •That’s just how I feel too. What I like here are the conversations. I’d rather exchange ideas with a few interesting people than generate large impression counts. I’m in no way opposed to promotion—I hope this medium also gets my music out there too. But it means more to me to know a few people listened and had thoughtful responses—or that one performer would like to play it—than that thousands passively know it exists.
@meganmariehart
Eldritch kcarruthers
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •thaell
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •That being said I don't reply that much even on here because I never know what to say (and maybe because years of other platforms have ruined the way I connect with people online)
Howard Chu @ Symas
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷 • • •rdm
in reply to Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷 • • •@KimSJ
I'm kind of mixed. I'd rather have 10 comments than 100 boosts, but I'd rather have 10 boosts than one comment.
I don't know what that says about me.
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •2/7
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •3/7
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •4/7
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •5/7
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •6/7
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •… to demonstrate that Fediverse posts are worth the time and effort. Perhaps there is also an argument for a feature request: maybe there should be audience metrics for toots?! Though I imagine that could be difficult due to Federation. Again, I have no idea if one already gets numbers and insight by running an instance.)
Perhaps we can move beyond numbers in the long run, but for now, I fear people enjoy them even if they gain nothing from them. Kinda like a game highscore, I suppose.
7/7
Kirsty
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •I run a corporate page on other socials because I can advertise.
I just don’t know how many people (I think a number approaching zero) would follow an Australian shed and cladding company.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Kirsty • • •@Kirsty The thing is this: few people complain here about posting about what you do.
There are instances like .art that seek creators who post about what they do.
What people do NOT tend to react well to is the language of avdertising. This can also be about what you do (e.g. LinkedIn), or specific events and services.
What @meganmariehart gets 100% right is behaving as a human being with a job she shows passion for, where she will show what she does.
I haven't yet encountered anyone...
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@Kirsty ... that kind of thing.
On the other hand, I've also insta-blocked people who slid into my mentions with the same kind of language that I see in LinkedIn DMs.
We're people here. Our passions are part of us. That's what we connect with.
(I mean me, fair, but it seems to reflect a good part of fedi.)
Petra van Cronenburg
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Mastodon prepares an entry for newcomers where they can find local instances instead of the one big. They can move at every moment.
My experience with social media (I work professionally with these): With much less followers you get much more interaction and relations to your audience in the Fediverse. But only if you are communicating actively. The ratio
Morten
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •David Bridger
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
Unknown parent • • •Thank you!
Megan Marie Hart
Unknown parent • • •MegatronicThronBanks
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Brisingr
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Marcos Dione
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Edit: oh, my instance only had your first toot. The other 6 appeared only once I replied here. Kinda ignore.
Original: could you edit this toot when you're done? I'm interested, but if I bookmark it, it'll just go into the how-come-it-has-not-toppled-yet pile of to-reads :-G
Marcos Dione
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •I once run an experiment similar to yours. I asked people to boost a toot with a URL to a webserver I controlled, no hashtags either. It got <3k boosts. Yours will probably get similar numbers. At that point, IIRC, the Fedi (or was it just Mastodon?) was ~2M accounts, so it reached ~15% of the net. I wrote abut it here:
grulic.org.ar/~mdione/glob/pos…
1/
The mastodon effect: meta discussion
.:: Marcos Dione/StyXman's glob ::.Marcos Dione
in reply to Marcos Dione • • •But hashtags are the best way to reach people. You mention a theater. They should post with hashtags of their region of influence (city, province, etc), the type of œvre (opera, music, etc) and maybe a couple more. They should sniff around until they find the right ones. I wish there were tools for that, hmmm...
2/
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Marcos Dione • • •Pflanzen und Bücher
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •social.growyourown.services/@F…
Fedi.Tips
2026-01-17 19:22:19
Ian K Tindale
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Lotus Samphony
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •never "quote"d before. Thanks.
Megan Marie Hart
2026-02-10 06:37:53
Maharani Santoso
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Maharani Santoso • • •Naked Hombre
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Why do you use THE IMPERATIVE FORM IN UPPERCASE when you post something?
Do you know the word "please"?
Do you have to SHOUT orders to strangers when you conduct an experiment?
jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •I can't see your post and am way to what ever to read all the rest of your 🧵 ..
😎
Not sure what you want to achive.
Yes we do have some federation statistics in at least some of our backends. friendica servers for example display the amount of platforms, server and people they found in the fedi.
Than there is the part that we don't like the standard fashion influencer who treat us like sheep to heard or cows to milk.
Of course there are business models to think of, but there are a whole lot of middle men that need to jump on the train. An important part of the enshitification talk by @pluralistic is about all this. No clicks you can buy, no algorithm you can buy, no data you can buy to groom your victims.
Like to say, we created this for us and people like you.
❤️
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ • • •Ambulocetus
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Alexander Goeres 𒀯
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Hraban (fiëé visuëlle)
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Petra van Cronenburg
Unknown parent • • •What's missing in the Fedi are local connections when you depend on real visitors. Hashtags don't work satisfactorily for this. Our groups are only boosting bots. One reason why the museum for which I unofficially do storytelling is officially on Facebook and Instagram: it is that that's where the real visitors are.
I can only encourage people to focus on communication rather than numbers. But this requires people power within the institutions.
Andrea
in reply to Petra van Cronenburg • • •Plus, I would like to add, it takes time to build your audience since you don't get any "help" by inbuilt algorithms. On the other hand, you don't need to try and understand how the algorithms work
I think we will see more people joining open platforms in the long run. When you're socialised with the numbers game, it can be hard to re-learn and focus on the interaction.
cpsask
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Like many others, I saw your boost without any hashtags.
I usually forget to use hashtags and often end up shouting into the wind. But it is ok, I’m as introverted on-line as in person. A large response would likely overwhelm me - 😀
Good luck convincing your group.
SteveJB
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipsGuillotine Jones, Flâneur
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •RED5HADES
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Andii
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Iron Bug
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •some platforms (like Mastodon) allow subscription to tags and some filtering on tags. others do not offer that features. but tags often may be used in seatch engines on servers and people may sort out messages with tags for easier search.
GeePawHill
in reply to iwein • • •iwein
Unknown parent • • •@h5e interesting use case yeah.
Maybe this works with content warning already, and we could theoretically simply use another tag symbol (if it's not recognized as a hashtag, it meets your desires)
For example &fediFunctions is very filterable to avoid post like this and it's not recognized as a hashtag. We do need to change habits for it, and that's hard.
And it can easily annoy or inconvenience people as well. Not sure what a screen reader does here, but I'm pretty sure it's not great.
Hanneke
in reply to iwein • • •Chris
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •cognitively accessible math
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Am I seeing *this* post that I am replying to without hashtags? Yes.
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to cognitively accessible math • • •𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖟𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖑⛧
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to 𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖟𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖑⛧ • • •mirabilos🐈⬛
Unknown parent • • •David - Forking Mad
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •JoyceHumphreys
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Linda (she/her)
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •I've read your original thread and many of the replies (including some of the rude ones).
I'm sincerely curious about something, though, and if you've said I missed it. Is there a downside to using hashtags that I'm not seeing? Maybe not a hashtag soup, but just, say, "# opera" at the end?
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Linda (she/her) • • •acm
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Patrick Morris Miller
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •About the only time I use hashtags is for my Darkover writeups (I do not call them reviews):
* (hash) Darkover so people can find, subscribe - or block! them
* (hash) bookstodon so the Bookstodon bot catches and boosts them.
If the English of a post is littered with Blue Words, my eye will usually skip over it as I've come to expect such posts to be unusually self-important.
Michael Cook
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Frankly hashtags annoy me.
The idea is good. I can see using one or two.
But 99.9% of posts seem to use either 0 or 40. And at that point it’s just massive visual noise that adds nothing for me.
If they were out of band they’d be better.
I, selfishly, don’t have a lot of interest in making things better for people who want to just spam them on every post to try and get engagement.
Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Michael Cook • • •Kagan MacTane (he/him)
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Rachel Wright
in reply to Megan Marie Hart • • •Megan Marie Hart
in reply to Rachel Wright • • •iwein
Unknown parent • • •Hanneke
in reply to iwein • • •David Mitchell
Unknown parent • • •It’s harder to abuse hashtags here, because if you spam hashtags people care about they will just block you without a second thought… but that makes the right hashtags super valuable because you can quickly engage with your specific community.