Every hashtag on every post on every platform should ALWAYS be pascal case (a.k.a. camel case). I made this to illustrate how screenreaders read hashtags depending on whether they are lowercase or pascal case.
It’s a small thing that all of us can do to build a more inclusive, accessible internet for all. Please take the time to use pascal case.
A new #fediverse tool I've been working on (please be gentle on it!): hashtag.place! It is a simple way to follow #hashtags as bot accounts, useful for ActivityPub implementations that don't support native following of hashtags, and for smaller/self-hosted instances that may not see a lot of the tagged posts from larger instances.
It's pretty simple:
Pick a hashtag you want to follow (e.g., #running)
Replace the #-sign with an @-sign and search for that user on the hashtag.place server (e.g., @running)
Follow the bot account and it will every few minutes post new posts with that hashtag seen on larger instances!
(The bots will self-delete if they have 0 followers for a few days, so don't worry if you don't like it and unfollow).
Feedback welcome for my first foray into #ActivityPub development!
Edited below. I imagine many of us are here from reddit, where hashtags weren't really a thing and in many places mentions were actively discouraged (/r/politics I'm looking at you). However, since everything we post or comment on kbin (and lemmy) has the potential of getting federated on a mastodon server, which leans heavily...
If you are coming from Twitter, you understandably may feel like it is a lot quieter here. Mastodon is not "dead," but there is no #algorithm bombarding you with stuff. Here you develop your own user experience by searching out and following people and things that interest you. You can pretty quickly build a much more satisfying experience, but it takes a little effort. Following #hashtags is a good way to get started. Be patient and join in conversations.
Antennas.
Antennas are effectively custom timelines. They work approximately like watching hashtags, but they can look for normal text as well. You can add as many phrases as you like and the results can be filtered with an ignore list.
You can make an antenna that just shows posts from specific users and notifies you when they post something new, you can make an antenna that collects posts containing or excluding certain key words, or you can make an antenna that collects only posts with files attached. You can even make an antenna consisting of “Posts from specific users” with “Show replies” checked.
Setting up
You can set up antenna by going to the More! section on your sidebar, and selecting Antennas. Press Add + to create your first. This is where you can also manage & edit previously created antennas.
Images:
Where to find More! on the sidebar (highlighted)
Where to find Antennas in the More! menu (highlighted)
My antennas page showing Add + button and my previously created antennas.
4 & 5) When you click Add + you get this page to set up your antenna. I've set one up as my Calckey antenna and another to alert me when PastaThief posts. There's a lot to go through here. Expect a separate post sometime soon.
6 & 7) What those antenna feeds look like.
On our progressive web app you can access your antennas by selecting the UFO in the top right corner.
Clicking on the UFO button brings up all my antennas and the link to manage/edit them
The most important ones:
Make an #introduction post littered with hashtags that are relevant to your interests. People with those interests are likely to follow or boost your introduction for more visibility.
Follow Follow Follow! Follow people that seem interesting to you. It's the basis of "federation" across the fediverse and helps your toot travel to other instances.
I've written an ActivityPub server which . That's all it does. It won't record favourites or reposts. There's no support for following other accounts or receiving replies. It cannot delete or update posts nor can it verify signatures. It doesn't have a database or any storage beyond flat files.
But it will happily send messages and allow itself to be followed.
This shows that it is totally possible to broadcast fully-featured ActivityPub messages to the Fediverse with minimal coding skills and modest resources.
I wanted to create a service a bit like FourSquare. For this, I needed an ActivityPub server which allows posting geotagged locations to the Fediverse.
I didn't want to install a fully-featured server with lots of complex parts. So I (foolishly) decided to write my own. I had a lot of trouble with HTTP Signatures. Because they are cursed and I cannot read documentation. But mostly the cursed thing.
Creating a minimum viable Mastodon instance can be done with half a dozen static files. That gets you an account that people can see. They can't follow it or receive any posts though.
I wanted to use PHP to build an interactive server. PHP is supported everywhere and is simple to deploy. Luckily, Robb Knight has written an excellent tutorial, so I ripped off his code and rewrote it for Symfony.
The structure is relatively straightforward.
/.well-known/webfinger is a static file which gives information about where to find details of the account.
/[username] is a static file which has the user's metadata, public key, and links to avatar images.
/following and /followers are also static files which say how many users are being followed / are following.
/posts/[GUID] a directory with JSON files saved to disk - each ones contains the published ActivityPub note.
/photos/ is a directory with any uploaded media in it.
/outbox is a list of all the posts which have been published.
/inbox is an external API endpoint. An ActivityPub server sends it a follow request, the endpoint then POSTs a cryptographically signed Accept message to the follower's inbox. The follower's inbox address is saved to disk.
/logs is a listing of all the messages received by the inbox.
/new is a password protected page which lets you write a message. This is then sent to...
/send is an internal API endpoint. It constructs an ActivityPub note, with attached location metadata, and POSTs it to each follower's inbox with a cryptographic signature.
That's it.
The front-end grabs my phone's geolocation and shows the 25 nearest places within 100 metres. One click and the page posts to the /send endpoint which then publishes a message saying I'm checked in. It is also possible to attach to the post a short message and a single photo with alt text.
There's no database. Posts are saved as JSON documents. Images are uploaded to a directory. It is single-user, so there is no account management.
I've raised an issue on Mastodon to see if they can support showing locations in posts. Hopefully, one day, they'll allow adding locations and then I can shut this down.
The code needs tidying up - it is very much a scratch-my-own-itch development. Probably riddled with bugs and security holes.
We often tell new folks to #Mastodon to follow #Hashtags, but we never tell people how to do it or which ones to follow. To follow a hashtag from the web client (it varies on the apps), click on the hashtag, and then click on the person icon with a +. Once you have done that, the icon changes to a person with an x; clicking on the x icon will also unfollow the hashtag (see my before and after screenshots). You can see which hashtags you follow by accessing the menu next to your profile name.
Kurznachrichtendienst: Mastodon bekommt jetzt eine #Volltextsuche
Bislang konnte man in Mastodon nur nach #Accounts und #Hashtags suchen, das ändert sich jetzt. Erste Instanzen sollen die Volltextsuche in wenigen Tagen erhalten.
Hashtags were fundamental to how I used Twitter. They helped not only with discoverability but also classification, organization, and community building. #Threads offers none of this. #Bluesky tries to make up for the lack of tags with feeds, but these don't help with topics that emerge on the fly. Only Mastodon offers #hashtags, but for them to work, more people need to enable the option #Mastodon now has to make one's posts visible to search from across the fediverse. @histodons#histodons
Capitalizing every word in a run-on set of words like a hashtag is called CamelCase. Using CamelCase helps #screenreaders figure out where the line between words is- like if you said QuitEmail it would understand you meant Quit Email instead of Quite Mail.
Kinda weird seeing apparently 50,000+ new #Mastodon users this week but barely any #introduction! What's stopping you? Introduce yourselves! Don't forget to load the post with #hashtags that are relevant to you so we know whether or not our interests align!
Since this is a 'niche' instance, my first recommendation is to check out the 'Local' feed. You will find public posts here from users ONLY on our instance. You'll quickly be able to find your people and they'll be able to find you!
Should we be using hashtags and mentions more?
Edited below. I imagine many of us are here from reddit, where hashtags weren't really a thing and in many places mentions were actively discouraged (/r/politics I'm looking at you). However, since everything we post or comment on kbin (and lemmy) has the potential of getting federated on a mastodon server, which leans heavily...
Is there a way to follow hashtags?
I've really been enjoying the "microblogs" section of some magazines because they aggregate content from Mastodon etc....