Following Hashtags

Hashtags are one of the cornerstones of most social media services; Mastodon is no exception and relies more on these for content discovery.

Hashtags are not 'created' and there is no central list of them. People, like you, will use tags in your posts and replies. Start with a # and then a word or words. Think of them as topic aggregators.

Within a post, Hashtags are clickable – Mastodon will try to find other posts with the same Hashtag. This expands your own reach and discovery.

The position of the tags can follow the natural flow of the sentence, and/or be added at the end, if they don't follow the text flow. Some people prefer to clump all their tags at the bottom and keep the text clear.

If you are using multiple words, Camel Case them as it makes it easier to read (e.g. #SaveTrees)

In addition to clicking on a tag in a post, you can search for them. Use the Search bar at the top-left. If your screen is too narrow (perhaps on a mobile phone), use the Explore option on the Navigation bar to show the 'Search'

In this example we typed #chocolate 1 and pressed enter. The results are shown. 2

You can follow tags too. Use the 'plus' 3 to follow the tag. In future, any post that Mastodon discovers with that tag will automatically appear in your Home timeline, even if you are not following the person.

To unfollow a hashtag, repeat the search and use the 'minus' symbol at the top to stop following.

This feature is new in version 4.1 and above of your Mastodon server software. (The version number will display on the bottom left of the main screen on the web version).

Click on the three dots on your profile and click the option to list your followed hashtags.

Mastodon is a decentralised social media service. Unlike others, such as Twitter and Facebook, it is not centrally controlled. This means that the Mastodon server you are using can operate on its own, or share information with others. Almost all useful Mastodon servers can share content with each other.

However, as there is no central list of Mastodon servers, they need to discover each other. This is done based on people, like you, sharing, following and interacting with people on other servers.

This has an impact on hashtags. When you search using a hashtag, Mastodon can only show you posts from servers it knows about. Therefore, you will be unlikely to see every post that exists on all the Mastodon servers. As your server and you grow, Mastodon learns of more servers and will show more. Having a theme specific server means the users on this server already share a common theme and are helping to grow and share.