@lori I am not sure what is the default setting for direct relaying, but the other relays need to be set up, so probably all is off initially.
When you activate relaying it will take some hours/days for these tags to show up in your timeline/on your server. In the relay settings you can also set relaying to get all posts and not just the ones with selected tags.
Unfortunately #Friendica sometimes is not so easy to run, but there is the !helpers forum to ask all kinds of questions, we'll help you with all.