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I can't sleep so I'm going to make that your problem. Let's talk about curation of information, no come back! I mean "gaining visibility and reach for your posts on Mastodon."

I'm a big nerd so I like to find out how things work. I knew how stuff worked on Twitter and why it was a Gen X/boomer platform. In this thread I hope to explain why Mastodon is a millennial platform, why there's no search*, and what you can do about it.

1/T

Here's some #feditips for you:

Private meaning you choose the people who see it. There are four levels of privacy on a post setting.

Globe means that the federated timeline, the local timeline, your followers and people who you tag can see it.

Unlock means randoms who click a post, followers and people who you tag can see it.

Lock means that your followers and people who you tag can see it.

Envelope means that the people who you tag can see it.

(And always mods. Like on Twitter.)

4/T

The second way to increase your reach is hashtags, #. These are the only way to find things on Gargron/vanilla/official Mastodon.

# let you: label posts so that people that are interested can find out more.

Find other people who like that thing.

Mute topics that you don't want to see.

This works both ways. People following # like journalists and even captain scarlet have found posts I've put up to lead them somewhere useful.

You can "fish" for # using autocomplete which helps.

7/T

The final way that I've found to increase your reach on vanilla mastodon is the work of @guppegroups they create groups that autoboost any post that mentions them on globe privacy setting (including this one. Untag it if you reply to this.)

This is a great way to:
condense the amount of accounts you follow. Not miss anything that is considered important by the person tagging them

And reach beyond the invisible walls inside Mastodon. ETA: https://genealysis.com/tip-hashtags

8/T

Invisible walls? Inside Mastodon? Yes. Decentralised, Federation, blablabla.

This means that if you are on Mastodon.social posting about #YourInterest and all the enthusiasts are on @your.interest but no one from @your.interest has ever looked at Mastodon.social then your hashtags will NOT work.

Your # will not work on Mastodon.social in this case. They will return blank. Equally @your.interest will NEVER see your posts tagged #YourInterest. Until someone from there visits Mastodon.social 9/T

Once this happens then the walls come down and suddenly you and your pals can geek out about journalism, #TTRPG, LevelUpA5e or trees with big trunks, Windows, windows, whatever.

A significant portion of my posts are devoted to helping people find each other because I really love being on #Mastodon and helping people. It's not something I do for the thanks but because I believe in the mission.

Boost. #. Groups. = Reach. Tip your servers and @gup.pe.

https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/109650766657029767

#Feditips

10/10

See above thread for an explanation.

The "invisible walls" of Mastodon mean that # search isn't always going to tell you what's out there. If you think, "Surely people from this major city are on the Fedi/Masto?" Then YES. They ARE! But no one on your server has found them yet.

11/10

There's a solution to get beyond the invisible walls. Imperfect but here we go:

Type this into the search box (without spaces)

@ tag-$tagname @ relay.fedi.buzz

E.g. using dnd as the tag name.
@tag-dnd

Works fine

But it doesn't work for:
@tag-a5e

Like gup.pe groups this is a discovery tool. It grabs info from "out of network" I.e. servers that no one is following.

#Mastodon #Feditips #Search #MastoSearch #fediSearch #FediHelp

I'm not a technical person but hey maybe this helps!

12/10

This is quite possibly the single best post I've ever seen on how-to Fedi (edited)
https://graphics.social/@metin/111799068106467789
@metin

Did you know you can easily search through your own Mastodon posts?

Include " from:me " in the search field.

Include " in:library " to show posts you have interacted with or written yourself.

Include " from:username "(the full username, including the instance) To search posts of a specific user.

#mastodon #MastoTips #FediTips #tip #tips #information #knowledge #fediverse

13/10