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2026-02-10 07:37:53

meganmariehart@mastodon.social

BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!

Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!

(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)

2026-02-10 08:10:59

Vsevolod Popov

Sevapopov@mastodon.ml

@meganmariehart 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.

2026-02-10 08:14:43

GeePawHill

GeePawHill@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart Swear to god, hashtags mostly just annoy me. I follow people. They boost people. I pick and choose from their boosteds.

2026-02-10 08:17:56

Amateur Human

djstreethawk@mastodon.scot

@meganmariehart I saw this and I don't follow you

2026-02-10 08:21:03

Goodlucksil

Goodlucksil@social.tchncs.de

@meganmariehart Very first post on my "trending" feed, so quite popular, E guess.

2026-02-10 08:34:23

leberschnitzel

leberschnitzel@existiert.ch

@meganmariehart godspeed

2026-02-10 08:35:41

MetalBrawler

metalbrawler@ieji.de

@meganmariehart If you don't add hashtags, you miss the audience that follows a particular hashtag. Those people are potential new subscribers.

2026-02-10 08:37:14

George Saich

geos@toot.community

@meganmariehart got it

2026-02-10 09:31:44

AvacadoAvenger

AvacadoAvenger@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart

I saw it and gave it a star. Reach is hard to quantify.

2026-02-10 09:44:14

MegatronicThronBanks

megatronicthronbanks@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart Aye

2026-02-10 10:01:38

Megan Marie Hart

meganmariehart@mastodon.social

(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

2026-02-10 10:03:51

Brisingr

brisingr05@freeradical.zone

@meganmariehart Saw this in the Trending section.

2026-02-10 10:10:09

Marcos Dione

mdione@en.osm.town

@meganmariehart 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

2026-02-10 10:18:55

Marcos Dione

mdione@en.osm.town

@meganmariehart 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:

https://www.grulic.org.ar/~mdione/glob/posts/the-mastodon-effect-meta-discussion/

1/

2026-02-10 10:59:07

Simon Brooke

simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

@meganmariehart I see it. But I boost or quote only things which have value.

2026-02-10 11:00:51

Praktizierende Besserwisserin

Irisfreundin@troet.cafe

@meganmariehart

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/115912064350248276

2026-02-10 11:36:40

Amo a Sam amat

Heterokromia@aus.social

Megan Marie Hart wrote the following Beitrag Tue, 10 Feb 2026 07:37:53 +0100

BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!

Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!

(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)

@meganmariehart never "quote"d before. Thanks.

2026-02-10 11:49:16

Maharani Santoso

maharanisantoso@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart 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? 😊

2026-02-10 12:12:35

Naked Hombre

nakedhombre@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart 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?

2026-02-10 12:24:48

jeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ

jesuisatire@social.tchncs.de

@meganmariehart

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.
❤️

2026-02-10 12:25:33

stux⚡️

stux@mstdn.social

@meganmariehart challenge accepted

2026-02-10 12:36:58

myrmepropagandist

futurebird@sauropods.win

@meganmariehart

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.

2026-02-10 13:02:26

Alexander Goeres 𒀯

jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Megan Marie Hart well the more people you get in contact to the higher the possibility some of them are ungood .. :-)

2026-02-10 13:26:56

Hraban (fiëé visuëlle)

fiee@literatur.social

@meganmariehart I didn’t see this and I never do what I am told.

2026-02-10 13:32:37

Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷

KimSJ@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart
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!

2026-02-10 13:40:39

cpsask

cpsask@techhub.social

@meganmariehart 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.

2026-02-10 13:41:21

SteveJB

SteveJB@beige.party

@meganmariehart 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 https://fedi.tips/

2026-02-10 13:46:00

Netraven

Netraven@hear-me.social

@meganmariehart I dislike hashtags, personally.

I preferred forums.

2026-02-10 13:47:43

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur

Guillotine_Jones@beige.party

@meganmariehart
I see your post, Megan.

2026-02-10 14:14:17

forgetpassword

forgetpassword@goingdark.social

@meganmariehart seeing is overrated, how many people can feel a post without #

2026-02-10 14:21:45

Iron Bug

iron_bug@friendica.ironbug.org

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.

2026-02-10 14:30:01

Chris

chris@social.sssa.africa

@meganmariehart can’t find the thread 🤷‍♂️

2026-02-10 14:31:19

cognitively accessible math

geonz@mathstodon.xyz

@meganmariehart I'm not sure what this is asking.
Am I seeing *this* post that I am replying to without hashtags? Yes.

2026-02-10 15:08:00

𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖟𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖑⛧

warzazel@messydata.de

@meganmariehart TL; DR what?

2026-02-10 16:15:02

Wulfric

wulfric@beige.party

@meganmariehart

I could be mistaken, but I see Fediverse interaction as more organic/direct. A post without hashtags is a cross between screaming into the void (low follower count) and addressing an audience (high follower count) with your content ultimately being spread by word of mouth (Boosts). Adding a hashtag would be the equivalent of posting on a bulletin board or presenting to a special interest group. Those who want to know will be able to find your post easier.

I don't think it's advertisements that are disliked but the unscrupulous use of tracking data and the bombardment of information which we neither asked for nor want. The latter is the primary use-case for "influencers" in my experience.

2026-02-10 17:09:42

Naga (he/him)

naga@toot.cat

@meganmariehart 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?

2026-02-10 17:11:27

acm

acm_redfox@jawns.club

@meganmariehart not boosting or quoting, but responding for the count

2026-02-10 18:04:35

Patrick Morris Miller

kentenmakto@mastodon.ie

@meganmariehart 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.

2026-02-10 18:23:37

Michael Cook

foobarsoft@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart 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.

2026-02-10 20:21:51

Kagan MacTane (he/him)

kagan@wandering.shop

@meganmariehart 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.

2026-02-11 01:05:11

Rachel Wright

virtuosew@mathstodon.xyz

@meganmariehart 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!

2026-02-11 18:55:15

mirabilos

mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org

@meganmariehart hmm, your own instance’s webinterface just shows 1K boosts at this point (and other instances don’t have the full number, mine shows 14 boosts for example).

But it can be asked for the full number from the command line:
curl -s -H 'Accept: application/json' https://mastodon.social/@meganmariehart/116044953904582813 | jq
(If you don’t have jq installed, just leave the | jq part out, it’s merely to pretty-print the result.)

[…]
  "shares": {
    "id": "https://mastodon.social/users/meganmariehart/statuses/116044953904582813/shares",
    "type": "Collection",
    "totalItems": 1010
  }
[…]

So, 1010 boosts currently. (Without jq it’s a bit trickier to find in the wall-of-text that is the result, but Ctrl-F “shares” might help. curl is even preinstalled on Mac OSX and Windows these days.)

2026-02-11 21:31:44

Ian McDowall

imcdowall@mastodon.social

@meganmariehart regarding hashtags or not - I follow many hashtags for specific interests. If you can find a good (i.e. relevant, not spammy, many followers) then they will work well for you. Otherwise, you rely on follower networks.
Regarding the burden on running your own instance -
I haven't (yet) set up my own fedi instance (although I have tinkered with the code for some) but I think it needs more resources and more work than a bare bones website.