Introduction
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Social media without algorithms
Mastodon works fundamentally differently from traditional social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. The most important difference is that there are no algorithms that automatically feed content into users' timelines. This is a deliberate design principle to give users full control and eliminate manipulative algorithms.
However, this presents a challenge: new Mastodon instances and users must actively work to be discovered. Content does not automatically appear in other people's timelines — it must be made visible through interaction and networking.
Different timelines
There are different types of timelines in Mastodon:
Home timeline
The home timeline shows all posts from accounts you follow in chronological order, as well as posts from hashtags you follow and boosts from accounts you follow. This is the default timeline that users see when they log in.
Local timeline
The local timeline shows all public posts from all users on your own Mastodon instance. This can be a source of interesting posts, especially on well-moderated instances.
Federated timeline
The federated timeline shows all public posts known to your own instance. This includes posts from accounts that local users follow, as well as content from connected relays.
Getting discovered
As mentioned at the beginning, Mastodon does not use algorithms to control the display of posts in the timeline. However, there are various ways to get discovered, which we will introduce to you below.
Distinctive profile
Prepare your user profile so that important fields are filled in. If possible, use website verification to increase your authenticity. You can also fill in the “Featured Hashtags” and tell a little bit about yourself in your biography. Here you can use other profiles you know as a guide.
Appropriate hashtags
Hashtags are the most important tool for discovery on Mastodon, as they are the primary mechanism through which users encounter new and interesting content. You can take advantage of this:
- Research well-known hashtags that match the content of your posts
- Use both popular and, if necessary, more specific/niche hashtags
- Write hashtags in CamelCase, i.e., in upper and lower case, for better readability and accessibility
Create a NewHere post
A post under the hashtag #NewHere is an established tradition on Mastodon and an effective way to be discovered. Describe who you are, what you are interested in, and what topics you want to write about. Feel free to use relevant hashtags for the topics you are interested in. You can also pin this post to your profile so that new profile visitors can see it right away.
Active networking and engagement
Interaction is the key to an active, growing network on Mastodon. Actively comment on other users' posts and boost interesting contributions. Also remember to respond to comments on your posts to build active communication. If you subscribe to hashtags that interest you, you can easily find exciting posts where you can get involved.
Mastodon Relays
Mastodon relays are special servers that forward and share content between different Mastodon instances. They function like distributors: a relay subscribes to the public timelines of various instances and distributes their activities to participating Mastodon servers via the ActivityPub protocol. This creates a separate network within the federation that exchanges content with each other.
When an instance joins a relay, all public posts from participating servers are routed to the instance's federated timeline. This leads to increased activity on the federated timeline, better search results for hashtags, and greater reach for posts from users of participating Mastodon instances.
Once you have found a suitable relay, you can enter it as an instance operator in your Mastodon settings under “Administration > Relays.”
Advantages and disadvantages of relays
New instances usually get off to a good start with Mastodon relays — you don't have to start from scratch to get your posts out to a wide network. Furthermore, users of your own instance are usually happy that more content from other users is visible. In addition, hashtag-based searches return significantly more content.
However, the use of Mastodon relays also greatly increases the storage requirements of the Mastodon instance, as media files, for example, are also copied to each participating server – this can quickly add up to 10-20GB of data per day. By default, we set a fairly short retention period for so-called “remote media,” i.e., media files from other servers, on your Mastodon hosting, so that they are retrieved again from the respective server when called up at a later point in time. This saves storage space on your instance.
We recommend joining only one or two relays, as more traffic also means significantly more load for the Mastodon background processes. This can ultimately cause your Mastodon instance to feel a little slower than usual. Check beforehand which relays match your topics and subscribe only to selected ones.
Please also keep in mind that third-party content must also be moderated in order to minimize the risk of spam for your users, for example.
Finding suitable relays
One possible source for Mastodon relays is relaylist.com. Here you can find active or available relay servers, as well as view their registration status and the number of connected instances.
However, there are also other sites where relays are sorted by topic—for example, there are also customizable relays such as relay.fedi.buzz.