Hashtags work a lot better on a big server than on a small one though.

For a post with a hashtag to make it to your feed, it has to make it to your instance first. This usually means either someone on your instance follows either the poster or someone who boosted the post.

That's why I also recommend following fedigroups which will push any posts the group is tagged in to your instance whether it would have made it there or not.

about.fedigroups.social/direct…

Yes, this is something I noticed when investigating my followers list -- if I don't follow them back and there's no one on my instance who does, either, then they start showing up as "inactive" -- even though clicking through, it's clear that they are still very active.

My instance no longer has any reason to retrieve their posts, see?
So I don't see them.

Same thing with hashtags, I think.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this. I guess I could follow a lot more people. But if I do, I'll probably have to make more use of lists to curate my home feed.

Federation does not always do what I think it does. 🤷‍♂️

The idea of the Fediverse is that running costs are low enough for anyone to start their own instance, so it has to be selective about what it federates.

If you want to increase your instance's view of the Fediverse more quickly, there's a list of suggestions at fedi.tips/using-relays-to-quic…

If admins want to increase posts visible for a particular hashtag, they can use relay.fedi.buzz

Also, here's a list of what gets federated: fedi.tips/which-posts-and-acco…

Using relays, groups, directories and scripts to quickly expand a server’s view of the Fediverse | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

^fedi.tips