@Friendica Support

TL;DR

Is it possible to use FollowBackBot - _followback@tags.pub on Friendica instances?

BACKGROUND

hello

i have accounts on two small Friendica instances, this one & also @Droppie [farcebk] 🐨♀🌈🐧​🦘

being small, they both have, to be blunt, really lousy hashtag-fetching behaviour from the wider fediverse. given i follow a lot of tags [these are as important or maybe even more so, than simply following only personal accounts, for me], this ongoing lousiness poses a real threat for my two accounts having any prospect of being serious daily fediverse "homes" for me, given both instances miss out on a large proportion of posts / tags that i routinely see each day in my Masto & Sharkey accounts.

I have tried using relay.fedi.buzz follows, eg tag-firefoxnightly@relay.fedi.buzz on another of my friendica accounts, but tbh it's a PITA coz i cannot simply do it myself, but instead must explicitly request the instance owner to manually add them at the server level via terminal. that kills all spontaneity for me.

recently i became aware of FollowBackBot - _followback@tags.pub [read the whole thread if you want all the background; https://friendica.au/display/7c8d90bc-252d65d8d081ff63-cb0df0a1], but in none of my friendica accounts am i able to actually follow it. eg, in this current account, the pic below shows the failure:

can anyone pls help me solve this?

cc: @Marek 🇦🇺🇩🇪 @Friendly Koala @Droppie [infosec] 🐨 ​

#Friendica #FriendicaAU #farcebookspace #HashtagFetching #dropbearpooterising

AJ Sadauskas

2026-04-05 12:28:59

Here's something really useful I've found.

One of the great things about the Fediverse is being able to follow hashtags.

But.

If someone puts up a post using that hashtag, and no-one on your instance follows that person or anyone who shares it, it won't appear in your feed.

This is particularly common if you're on a small or single-user instance.

Here's the solution.

First, follow @_followback

It will follow you back.

And then tags.pub bot then reshare all of your posts that use hashtags.

So if you do a post with the hashtag #Fediverse, then @fediverse will share your post.

Here's where the magic happens.

The tags.pub bot will do the same thing to everyone else who follows that followback account.

So if you follow @fediverse, then you'll get a feed of everyone who uses #Fediverse on the Fediverse.

And you'll see their posts even if no-one on your instance follows them.

And it works for all hashtags.

Just put the name of the hashtag, followed by @tags.pub

So @tech follows all posts using #tech, for example.

Or @news follows all posts using #news

#relay #relays #selfhosted #selfhosting #Mastodon #feditip #feditips #fedihelp