I have a question about how federation works, and I feel like I probably asked before so either I didn't get an answer or I got one that didn't "stick."

How does it work? I see a lot of "please boost this post so my instance can federate."

Does that do it? Or does someone from another instance have to FOLLOW that person to get them federated to that other instance?

Or is it enough for that person on the new instance to start following folks on other instances?

I really thought it had to do with the following part, not the boosting part.

#Mastodon #FediQuestion

@AngelaPreston I haven't looked this up, but if memory serves, as you said, it has to do with the following part 🙂

Basically, if you are on server B and boost posts from somebody on server A, my understanding is that somebody on server C will get the post if they follow you but aren't following anybody on server A. Not only that, since the post is now on server C, I believe everybody who sees the main timeline of server C will see it (depending on the privacy setting of the original post of course). Or something like that.

Plus, anybody from another server who follows the user on server C (like server D or E or whatever) will also see the post, is how I understood it.

But I might be wrong since I didn't verify what I thought I knew when I wrote all this 😛

@AngelaPreston I don’t know for sure, but I think the idea is that if you boost, all instances that have at least one person that follows YOU will pull a copy of the toot. Once that instance has a copy, then everyone else on that instance would be able to discover the toot via hashtags. I think this would be especially helpful for people that don’t follow you or the OP, to discover the toot via subscribed hashtags.

Again, I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s why they’d be saying that.

@scottmiller42 @AngelaPreston
It also puts a record of their account and their instance on the the servers of everyone following the people who are boosting it, meaning if you go to the search bar, and type in the name of their instance, something will actually come up. This makes it a lot easier for them to get direct follows from other servers.

In general though, a lot of us staff members will generally follow people just because they run an instance, meaning if you get it in front of one of us, your posts will start showing up on our instance. That's especially useful if you do something like boosting the best posts off your own instance and affiliated ones, because then all of those proliferate to the mass of servers that people followed you from.

Mainly it's just about getting the servers talking.

@Raccoon Thank you!

@scottmiller42

@AngelaPreston if someone on instance A starts following you, the future post will be federated to that instance.

@hirad Thank you!

@AngelaPreston Unless something changed in the last few years, yeah, it has to do with the following part.
An instance knows your posts if someone on that instance follows you. Or it might know individual posts because someone boosted one of your posts so someone on that instance saw it. But AFAIK that doesn't do anything for the visibility of anyone else's posts from your instance on that instance.

@anke Thank you!

@AngelaPreston boosting a post will at least make other instances aware of that profile, so the profile can be found from search. i assume that’s why they ask for boosts. it does not mean that further posts will be federated, that only happens when someone follows that account, as you mentioned.

@nimona Thank you!

@f Thank you, Fahim!