Hashtags are important in the #fediverse, for both following and muting, but people don't seem to be using them as much as they could, even the obvious ones. That's understandable. Remembering and typing them can get tedious.
So, a little #feditip : instead of typing #hashtags de novo each time, keep a running collection of ones you use in a document. That way, you can copy many hashtags, paste, and delete any irrelevant ones.
I keep mine in an email draft, grouped by category. #feditips
Pixelfed is a photo sharing network on the Fediverse, intended as an alternative to Instagram. You can follow Pixelfed accounts from Mastodon and vice versa. There's more info about it at:
I’ve been using it for around 3 weeks and been having a great time. The home feed is so much cleaner than Instagram, especially without all the ads. Find a bunch of cool people to follow and enjoy!
I can also recommend the Vernissage app if you want a ultra clean feed.
Did you know that Mastodon lets you create lists of people you follow? While people use these for many purposes, here’s my approach.
Every time (well, most times) I follow someone, I also add them to one of my lists. Right now, I have lists for Artists, Boosts, Bots, Humor, Law, Med, Nature, News, Politicians, Scientists, Tech, and Writers. If nothing fits, I make a new group. If they fit in multiple places, I add them to multiple lists.
So, why do I do this? There are two main reasons: curation and hankering.
Curation
I follow people widely. If someone posts something interesting, whether as a reply or a post that is boosted, I open their profile, follow them, and add them to lists. As you can imagine, this results in a home
feed that at times is a firehose of posts. So, when I find myself overwhelmed, I do a bit of judicious trimming. In general, I don’t unfollow or mute people. Instead, if I haven’t interacted with someone for a while, or they are posting way more than I can keep up with, I just remove them from my home feed. This just means that means that I won’t see their posts in my Home feed. Sometimes, when I look at someone’s profile, I see that they are a very prolific poster or booster, and I choose to just add them to a list or two and not put them in the home feed at all.
[ Update: I realized I forgot to mention that you can also leave someone’s posts in your Home, but remove their Reposts/Boosts from your Home. Should be accessible as a menu item somewhere when viewing their profile. ]
[ Update 2: I hadn’t realized that the “Remove from Home” feature I was using is unique to the Mona app. There is a new feature rolling out on Mastodon now that allows you to create lists that will exclude people from the home feed. When you edit a list, look for a setting to “Exclude these posts from home”. If you don’t see it yet, you will need to wait until your instance admin installs the latest Mastodon software. I think this means you could use my exact method, except also create a list called “removed from home” which has this option set, but I haven’t tried it yet. ]
Hankering
Sometimes, I feel a yearning for a specific kind of post. Maybe I want to see some art. Maybe I’m looking for any news about a specific topic. Maybe I just want to read something funny. I can just tap on the appropriate list and see posts from people who specialize in those things, including people who I followed, but for some reason removed from the home feed.
Do you use lists in Mastodon? What do you use them for? I’d love to hear how others are using this tool.
Because it's part of the Fediverse, you can follow OwnCast accounts from Mastodon etc, and when they go live you will see a post in your timeline to let you know.
For example, the RetroStrangeTV livestream can be viewed at:
YSK: When making posts on Lemmy/Kbin always put at the end some hashtags related to your post topic.
So users from Mastodon and Pixelfed can interact with your post without even need to use their Lemmy/Kbin account or learn about "how to use the ActivityPub".
This also helps to have more content avaliable across the Fediverse due to better discoverability.
The trick is to edit out the mention of the lemmy community before you add the hashtags then lemmy doesn't see the updated version of the post with the hash tags, but people on mastodon see the hash tags
If you wanted to make a text post on #Lemmy from Mastodon, one key thing to remember is that the content warning is not the title of the post. The first line of your post is their title. If you wanted to write in the body of a post for example, you would drop down two lines. Like this.
This text will become the body of the post on Lemmy because it is on a separate line from the title line above.
The first line of your Mastodon/Hometown/Glitch post is the title of their post. The second line, after a line break or paragraph break, will be the body of the post.
I don’t know if you can post to #KBin yet from Hometown or Mastodon yet but I hope that will get added soon! #FediTips
Just a reminder to those who are new here to add alt text to your images to keep fedi accessible. Especially people who post pixel art. For some reason, many pixel artists don't put alt text in their posts and it makes me sad.
Let's change that, guys. It doesn't need to be detailed, something like "a pixel art drawing of x" is a good enough description.
Stars are not boosts here! They don't shove what you star into your followers' feeds – which means you can use them with wild abandon! Go nuts, star kinky shit, give people a "hey this is cool" without worrying that you're going to land it on your friends' TLs.
Feedback is extremely welcome. This is a loving document, it can only be honed and get better with loving input from other users. What are your best tips for #creators?
@AimeeMaroux@CoinOfNote Wow, what a confusing yet interesting fact! So if I just follow people on different servers, I accidentally get wide coverage on my hashtag searches!? Never would have guessed that in a thousand years.
@AimeeMaroux@CoinOfNote I apologize for not being more clear (and gracious). I actually thought about adding softening language but I was in a rush. Sorry!
1/ The #fediverse is a public park, not a privately owned country club. There’s no hostess, but many will welcome you. Wander, explore, enjoy the fresh air
6/ Sites running on #Mastodon and some other #fedi platforms are mobile friendly in a browser. But most find everything easier when using an app. There are several great apps for #iOS and #Android and even some desktop apps. The official Mastodon app though is the low end, try out some of the others
7/ You control your feed. You can:
• mute users you don’t want to hear from
• …mute them temporarily or permanently
• mute threads that have gotten too noisy
• block users
• block entire instances
• opt to see only posts (no boosts) by anyone you follow
• set #filters to screen out words and phrases