If you follow or search for a hashtag, it can only show posts that your server has noticed anyway. (If you're interested, there's a complete list of what servers notice here: https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/).
In this sense, hashtags are "passive", they are basically filtering what your server can see anyway.
If you want a more active way to see what is going on, try following groups. They actively push all their content to everyone, more info: https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/
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Hey there Neil! 👋
There are many kinds of groups on here.
At the moment the most common kind of group is running on Guppe software, where it simply repeats posts sent to the account. There's no moderator as such, but because the posts are all hosted on servers they are subject to moderation by those servers.
For example if you see something unsuitable or spammy, you can report it just like a non-group post.
More info about groups at https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/
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Hey there!
Don't worry, people can see you from other instances, and you can see them.
Not *every* account is visible from every instance though, for very good reasons (more info: https://fedi.tips/why-arent-all-mastodon-and-fediverse-posts-and-accounts-automatically-visible-from-all-servers/) but if you're curious you can see what determines visibility in this article: https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/
To bypass this visibility issue, you might want to try following groups, whose posts are all seen by everyone who follows them: https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/
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All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.