Is it possible to make a post on the Fediverse which:

• is publicly viewable to all,

• doesn't necessarily get delivered to my followers' timelines, and

• is delivered to everyone following a particular hashtag?

I have lots of interests and would like to toot more about them: railways, FOSS, standards, politics etc., but I don't want to spam all of my followers with stuff they're not interested in. I could create multiple profiles, but that seems like a crude hack - is there a better way?

#FediTips

@seabass A post like this wouldn't get federated anywhere. There's no concept in ActivityPub of hashtags, if you follow a hashtag your instance just adds any (visible to you) posts it receives with that hashtag to your timeline. If that post doesn't get federated to your server for another reason (for example if you follow the sender), you won't see it.

Perhaps Lemmy is what you're looking for? You post to a community, and everyone subscribed to that community receives it.

I don't think this exists, @seabass. I am #fediverse / #ActivityPub / #Mastodon n00b, but I think your options for this are:

0) Create a separate account for other interests & link them via your profiles (I see this often.)

1) Contain the discussion to a thread (always reply, never new post) & use the appropriate hash tag.

2) Use the hashtag as content warning so followers can ignore easily if not interested.

I post about #MST3K enough I've considered (0) & making @bkuhn@mst3k.social …

#FediTips

@bkuhn @seabass if you feature the hashtags on your profile others can use them to filter your posts on your profile page as well.

@shadowwwind but can they *only* follow you for that hash tag and nothing else?

I think that's what @seabass was asking for. (Well, I think @seabass wanted the opposite, technically).

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@bkuhn @seabass not that j know of

@seabass which of your followers are not interested in railways because frankly they should take a long hard look at themselves and reassess their priorities in life

edit: oh dear i did not look at the date on your post before replying

@bovine3dom Haha no problem; someone I met at FOSDEM 2026 just followed me and boosted a load of my old posts 😄

But yeah, I'm on Träwelling now, so definitely prioritizing the train content more 😃

@seabass I've had this question as well, didn't find a good answer.

Maybe this proposal by @evan would help! https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/WNDQUQ-tags-pub/

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