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2026-09-03 18:18:36

happyborg

happyborg@fosstodon.org

My most wanted feature: the ability to block bot accounts with a single option. Should be the default for those which ret00t hashtags.

Bots that ret00t based on a hashtag should be eliminated imo, so I block them all.

People can follow hashtags, so all #bots do is create a centralised point of weakness. They don't add, they detract from the #fediverse #fedi #Mastodon

2026-09-04 10:55:54

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@happyborg

People can follow hashtags

People on Mastodon can follow hashtags. But just because people on Mastodon can, doesn't mean people everywhere else in the Fediverse can, too.

AFAIK, some of the minimalist microblogging server applications designed for self-hosting don't offer this feature. I'm not sure if Pleroma and Akkoma have it.

Hubzilla, which is what I'm commenting from, definitely doesn't have this feature. And Hubzilla is anything but minimalist. It's the most powerful and versatile of all Fediverse server applications.

Also, if you can follow hashtags, you can only follow hashtags on your home server. But if you're on a small server, hardly any messages with these hashtags wash up there in the first place. You'll miss a lot. If you're on a private, single-user server, following hashtags is completely useless because the only messages with these hashtags that reach the server are those that you receive from your own contacts anyway.

(streams) and Forte, both being streamlined and more advanced Hubzilla descendants, can follow hashtags. But there simply aren't any big (streams) or Forte servers, especially not with lots of traffic from Mastodon. Most of the few (streams) and Forte users run their own single-user servers.

This is also why it doesn't matter much whether snac or GoToSocial users can follow hashtags: These two are almost exclusively used as private, single-user servers because that's what they're designed for first and foremost.

To make it short: Most Fediverse users outside the big Mastodon servers can only follow hashtags by relying on "bots" that forward posts with these hashtags which they find on e.g. mastodon.social.

In fact, this is good for Mastodon users as well. It helps circumvent two of Mastodon's disadvantages.

One is that it has no support for groups whatsoever (the Fediverse does have groups in case you don't know). If Mastodon users need to talk about a certain topic, they can't do so in a group about that topic. All they can do is shout into the ether with certain hashtags and hope that the right person catches their toot.

The other one is that this is highly unlikely on Mastodon itself. On Mastodon, most content remains unseen.

Mastodon doesn't offer a list of unread messages in the timeline, not even a counter. All that Mastodon users can do is scroll down their timeline until they either hit content that they've already seen, or until they've got no more time, or until they want no more. Anything below will remain unseen. It's sad that this counts as the default or even without alternatives in the Fediverse. And most Mastodon users follow so many accounts and channels (plus hashtags occasionally) that they can impossibly read all the messages they receive.

Let's suppose a Mastodon user wants to talk about Hubzilla for some reason. I've seen this happen often enough. The only chance they have, not knowing that the @hubzilla exists, much less that they can join it from Mastodon, is by tooting into the void with the hashtag #Hubzilla and hoping that either one of their followers or someone somewhere out there on their followers' servers follows the hashtag #Hubzilla.

But none of their followers comes online soon enough to scroll down to their toot. They all have tons of other content in their timelines above that toot, so they never scroll all the way down to it. If not, they simply don't know what Hubzilla is. And even if any Mastodon users follow the hashtag #Hubzilla (which I doubt), this still doesn't mean that one of them scrolls all the way down to that toot.

And then there's me. As I've already said, I'm on Hubzilla. I can't follow hashtags directly. Instead, I "follow" the hashtag #Hubzilla by having this hashtag on the FediBuzz relay (https://relay.fedi.buzz/) as a contact. Or, in Mastodon terms, by following it. FediBuzz is not a bot server. It's a relay that server admins can connect their servers to to have more public content on their servers (if their server software supports relays, that is). Something completely normal on Mastodon, especially on small servers.

So when someone on Mastodon toots something with #Hubzilla, I receive it as a new post. But I don't have to scroll down a timeline of unknown length to find it. I have a counter for unread messages and other unnoticed actions. It unfolds into a list of unread messages and other unnoticed actions. From there, I can get directly to that post. I will notice it. And I'll usually be able to help.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Relay #Relays