Evan Prodromou
Friends, if you haven't already, it would be a big favour to me if you could enable tags.pub to boost your public tagged posts.
Just follow @_followback . It will follow you back, and when you make a post with a hashtag in it, the server will boost your post from the appropriate hashtag.
If you're interested in any topics, like @nokings , follow that account to get posts with that hashtag from across the Fediverse.
Let me know how it works for you!
Evan Prodromou
@mayintoronto one reason is because your friend Evan asked you to do it as a favour.
Another reason is that when you "follow" a hashtag in Mastodon, it only filters the content that got to your server for other reasons.
There are three ways that content arrived: either you follow the author, someone else on your server follows the author, or your server is subscribed to a relay.
tags.pub lets you follow a hashtag globally, not just filter what got to your server.
May Likes Toronto
@evan Is there a reason to do this when we can already follow hashtags?
Evan Prodromou
@mayintoronto yes!
May Likes Toronto
@evan ah, so this would help a lot with say, @introduction for unfederated single user servers.
Evan Prodromou
@rickscully OK. I'll change the instructions. Search for @_followback in your Mastodon server, then click the follow button there.
scully
@evan I am so confused. I click on that account and am met with a wall of buttons(?) that say Add. There is one that reads "Accept" but I haven't knowingly clicked anything. I don't see how to simply follow. And when I click on the follow account in certain iOS apps I get nothing at all. *shrug*
Evan Prodromou
And if you're interested in a hashtag, search for thathashtag at-symbol tags.pub in your Mastodon search UI and follow it there. It will boost all the content it finds with that tag to you.
Evan Prodromou
@sean Thanks so much! I appreciate it.
Sean Coates
@evan Done; I didn't know about this, so thanks for that.
Reading the replies, it's surprising to me that people don't really understand how tags work here. I think maybe my world view is different because I'm on a single-user instance, so it's much more obvious to me that tags don't always have a lot of reach.
Evan Prodromou
@jakebrake @mayintoronto No problem! Nobody is obligated to use it. It's there to serve a purpose for people who want that feature.
Solo la 🌍 salva a la 🌎
This gives me the heebie-jeebies. "Global" makes me uncomfortable. Automatic boosting makes me uncomfortable. Both are not particularly Fediverse-type concepts.
Here's the intro page on this (note that Social Web Foundation lists Meta and Auttomatic as partners):
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2026/03/17/introducing-tags-pub/
Sorry, Evan, but no thank you.
Evan Prodromou
@mayintoronto @jakebrake@ohai.social The way tags.pub does boosts, we don't share any of your content with servers that you have blocked. So, hopefully, you shouldn't see an uptick in harassment.
May Likes Toronto
@jakebrake I was a tad worried about that, but I'm on a server that has threads blocked. If it's just a boost, I'm willing to try it out.
Mostly want to see if I find an uptick in harassment.
Evan Prodromou
andyc
@sean @evan /me goes to convert my hashtag follows to tags instead.
Evan Prodromou
@jakebrake @mayintoronto Hey, Jake. Your concerns are justified! It's never a bad idea to look at projects carefully.
tags.pub is one of the oldest projects on the ActivityPub network. It was one of the test implementations of ActivityPub. It's been dormant for years; we've been lucky enough to get to implement this with funding from the Sovereign Tech Agency.
The service is opt-in, either by user or by server (and users can opt out if their server opted in). Nobody has to use it.
Evan Prodromou
@jakebrake @mayintoronto I totally get the concern about centralisation. I think there are two mitigations for that issue.
The first is that there are two other services that do something similar already: https://relay.fedi.buzz/ and tagpush.
The other is that the tags.pub software is Free and Open Source software; anyone can set up their own server using the software. If you decide to do that (I hope you do!), please let me know, and we can figure out how to share public data.
Solo la 🌍 salva a la 🌎
I'm wondering about down the line.
To really work, this system needs to connect to basically every Fedi server, or at least all the big ones, right? Which sounds very centralized to me. And, if it does become a popular thing, gives SWF leverage over the Fediverse: Want your posts "fully" boosted, you need to talk to SWF.
Maybe I'm missing something?
Steve's Place
@evan @_followback One post, 3 tags, 3 responses from tags.pub!
Alan is @cogdog 🇨🇦
@evan @_followback It worked perfect. My obscure hashtag showed up @cogdogcooltech
Evan Prodromou
@dubious_dragon I think so.
Karl T.
@evan Does this service work on "quiet public" posts as well as "public" posts?
Evan Prodromou
@adb thank you friend!
Arianne B
@evan Done
Evan Prodromou
@cogdog awesome!
Evan Prodromou
@mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto
You can definitely opt out of tags.pub! Nobody has to use it if they don't want to.
You can follow hashtags in Mastodon; many other servers on the Fediverse don't have that feature.
When you follow a hashtag in Mastodon, it only shows you content from people you follow, or from people who others on your instance follow. If someone posts on the Fediverse using a hashtag and nobody on your instance follows them, you won't see it.
Maria Langer | 📝🛥️💎
@jakebrake @evan @mayintoronto I'm with you. No thank you. People can follow hashtags. Nobody is following the accounts that are set up to echo hashtags. It's a waste of bandwidth.
Evan Prodromou
@ufal the followback account? I've had a couple of notes on that. Can you add more info here?
Ufal Salman/ritokatsuga
Evan Prodromou
@mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto you're right that there are very few followers for the hashtag accounts on tags.pub. We are just getting this service started.
We're actually pretty careful with bandwidth.
I am one of the authors of ActivityPub, and I wrote a programmer's guide for O'Reilly Media about the protocol. I try to use it as carefully as I can.
If nobody's following a hashtag account, no data gets delivered.
Evan Prodromou
@ufal 🙏🏼
Ufal Salman/ritokatsuga
Evan Prodromou
@mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto
> You can follow hashtags in Mastodon; many other servers on the Fediverse don't have that feature.
> When you follow a hashtag in Mastodon, it only shows you content from people you follow, or from people who others on your instance follow. If someone posts on the Fediverse using a hashtag and nobody on your instance follows them, you won't see it.
Maria Langer | 📝🛥️💎
@evan @jakebrake @mayintoronto Yet every single time I use a hashtag I get a notification for each hashtag. Your system is obviously creating accounts for each hashtag.
I honestly don't understand why you think this is necessary when one of the benefits of mastodon over other systems is that you can easily follow hashtags. You are attempting to solve a problem that does not exist. (1/2)
Evan Prodromou
@mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto thanks, I'll add that to our list of things to work on!
Maria Langer | 📝🛥️💎
Personally, I'd like to see you folks deal with hashtag abuse, when people use 10 or more hashtags in a post to spam as many people as possible. I cannot count the number of times I've seen posts totally unrelated to one of the hashtags I follow. That's a problem. How about solving that? (2/2)
@evan @jakebrake @mayintoronto
Evan Prodromou
@mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto I agree about the notifications. Right now, you either have to block the tags.pub server or turn off all boost notifications. I think we'll need to get a change made to Mastodon to let you hide boost notifications from a single server.
We do have one hashtag actor per hashtag, which lets people follow a specific hashtag. It's very lightweight, though.
Evan Prodromou
@wjmaggos I'm not sure of your question. You mean, is there a document about how hashtags work on the Fediverse? And a similar document about how user and content search works on the Fediverse?
william.maggos
is there a detailed explainer on tags here and maybe search on the fedi too? it's the one argument I think the other place can make but I'm sure we can be better at it too.
Alan is @cogdog 🇨🇦
@evan But here is a concern or maybe I am missing something. Every time I use a hashtag I get a boost notification from its account on tags.pub. This is excessive noise. It puts a burden on having to put a mute on each account?
Evan Prodromou
@liaizon @cogdog I've got an issue open for this.
https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub/issues/13
Right now, I think the only thing we can do is submit a patch to Mastodon to let you ignore boost notifications from a particular account or domain.
wakest likes your bugs ⁂
@cogdog @evan yeah this makes Tags.pub totally not usable in its current form. I was gonna report about this situation too after enabling it for a few days. Now my boost count is completely off too so if I make a post that ends in 5 hashtags it makes it look like this is a more popular post then one that has 0 hashtags.
Evan Prodromou
@liaizon @cogdog They are the correct numbers, though. tags.pub does real boosts.
wakest likes your bugs ⁂
@evan @cogdog this isn't mastodon specific tho, it would need to be "patched" in every codebase that supports sharing so the boost number would still be correct otherwise every piece of software that shows interaction numbers will inflate them for posts that are interacted with by Tags.pub
Evan Prodromou
> the number of boosts something has and the reason the number is there is for humans to see how "popular" something is.
No, it's to show how many boosts there are.
wakest likes your bugs ⁂
@evan @cogdog @julian technicality yes, but for socially no. the number of boosts something has and the reason the number is there is for humans to see how "popular" something is. the way you are using boosts to get a more global view of hashtag usage is not what non tech humans are thinking when they read that number. and if your service gets popular enough to actually work, then a majority of posts would have numbers that are breaking the expectation of people who are reading them
Evan Prodromou
@liaizon @cogdog @julian What if the boosts count broke down by manual and automated boosts? "23 boosts (19 manual, 4 automated)", something like that?
Tim Chambers
@evan @_followback @joe Evan: how many people do you think you need to be a big enough sample?
And maybe reach out to each big servers admin to ask them to follow?
Evan Prodromou
@tchambers @joe great idea!
I think it's a really interesting question of how much of the Fediverse needs to be providing data to tags.pub.
I think this might be an interesting network science problem. I'll do some math and let you know!
Evan Prodromou
@sandwich on some servers, like mastodon.world, it's enabled by default. You can opt out by adding hashtag NoTagsPub to your bio.
Benj⛧min
@evan @_followback Seems like tags.pub automatically shares public tags, even without following. Followed anyway.
Evan Prodromou
@dineinfr thanks, I'll check!
dineinfr
Evan Prodromou
@giantspecks @mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto Hi John! I agree, you should be able to follow hashtags globally across the Fediverse. That's why we're making tags.pub.
John Harden
@evan @mlanger @jakebrake @mayintoronto so after 2 years just now learning how hashtags work here - or more accurately, *don’t* work here - and honestly this is a smh moment for me. Aren’t we on a social network to communicate? Why why why design things in a way that intentionally silos groups and cripples the way hashtags are supposed to work (and do work, everywhere else)? 🤦♂️
Evan Prodromou
@solarbranka that's surprising; I don't think that should be possible. I'll test it more thoroughly and let you know.
Solar Branka :mw:
When I saw this tags.pub I originally blocked the whole domain, I've unblocked it after reading your post. However, it was still boosting my posts even after blocking it, could you please advise. Thanks.
Evan Prodromou
@solarbranka yes, great idea!
Solar Branka :mw:
Thanks a lot, appreciated.
Would you consider adding some profile images? Just so the automated accounts don't look bland and robotic.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.