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How to follow people and content?

Search liberally. You can follow users and hashtags so that content shows up in your home timeline.

You can also use...

  • Aggregator accounts:
    • Newsmast Community Feeds: each account boost posts matching a specific set of hashtags across a variety of instances.
    • tagpush.app: see here for the topics.
    • #FediBuzz Relay: @tag-[hashtag]@relay.fedi.buzz follows a hashtag and @instance-[example.com]@relay.fedi.buzz follows an instance's local timeline (please only follow small instances). Since fedi.buzz pulls data from multiple instances, their hashtag feed can be better than simply following the hashtag through the instance.
  • "Groups" will boost posts that mention them. There are:
  • External user directories:

...and simply copy the appropriate handle into the search box to follow it.

If you're not sure about your interests, #introduction is a good starting point.

It is also important that you interact with them. See best practices before doing so.

But there aren't that many posts on the hashtag I want!

Try searching the same hashtag on another homeserver, such as larger ones like mastodon.social, or one specific to that interest if applicable. Feel free to ask me for instance recommendations if you need pointers.

You can always interact with remote posts by copying the appropriate handle or post URL into the search box. There are also browser addons that facilitate the process, like Mastodon: Simplified Federation.

Alternatively you can use FediBuzz which was mentioned above.

But there are specific topics that I don't want to see!

You should take advantage of the filter feature. You can also mute other users if you wish to hide their posts in various feeds. Also see here for a more comprehensive overview of how to not see certain content.

Note

See here for a deeper discussion on pitfalls of Mastodon's discoverability.