Introducing tags.pub

tags.pub is a new service under development by the Social Web Foundation. It is a global hashtag server — it lets you follow a hashtag across the Fediverse. There’s lots of information on the tags.pub home page, and I (Evan) did a talk about tags.pub at FOSDEM 2026. This blog post answers some basics about tags.pub.

• To follow a hashtag globally, search for a user with that name at tags.pub, like @example for the #example hashtag. Follow that account, and it will share all the content it sees with that hashtag to you. If you unfollow the account, it should stop sharing to you. The usernames only have letters and numbers in them, and they only go up to 64 characters.
• To share your content with tags.pub, search for and follow the @_followback account. It will follow you back (thus the name) and your public posts will be shared by the hashtag accounts on tags.pub. If you unfollow the follow back account, it will unfollow you back, and your content will no longer be shared.
• You can connect a whole server to tags.pub by using the relay interface. Add https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/inbox (Mastodon) or https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____ (Pleroma) to your server relays. This is a one-way pipe — your server will send public posts to tags.pub, but tags.pub won’t send all its public data back to you. Instead, your users should follow hashtag accounts to get specific feeds.
• We respect your agency. If your server is connected to tags.pub and you don’t want it to boost your content, add #NoTagsPub to your bio. If you already have #NoBots, that should be plenty. You’ll still be able to follow tags.pub hashtag accounts. If you don’t want to see or be seen by tags.pub at all, you can block the domain ‘tags.pub’ entirely.
• Becoming the ‘global’ hashtag server is a goal. We are still ramping up, and there are a lot of people and servers that are not yet connected.
• tags.pub will not share your content with accounts or servers that you have blocked. It only shares the link to your content, so your block will be respected.
• tags.pub is developed and operated by Social Web Foundation. We are a US non-profit. The servers are located in Beauharnois, Quebec, Canada in a data centre run by OVHCloud, a French corporation. We try to keep the data storage to the absolute minimum necessary to provide the hashtag sharing service. There is no search index, and we don’t archive your content. The code is Free and Open Source software under the AGPL-v3.
• If you have a feature request, or a bug report, please add a GitHub issue. If you have a private comment or question, please use our contact form.

@evanprodromou @example ooooh. I like the sound of this.

@evanprodromou Looks like I'm the first to follow @signpainting and @signwriting, among a few others to get the ball rolling.

I'm intrigued to see how this works and what lands in my feed as a result...

@evanprodromou

So this isn't global tracking, but rather opt-in for a couple of servers and a dozen individual users?

@rusty__shackleford @evanprodromou

Exactly. For example, in the Cyrillic segment there’s a bot that reposts every message in Russian it can get access to. And it operates on an opt-out basis.

Here, however, as I understand it from the description, either you yourself (for your own account) or the server admin (for the whole server) has to connect the bot manually. And posts from those who don’t do that simply won’t be seen by the bot.

@evanprodromou @example It’s probably worth adding an explanation why tags.pub is necessary; aka: why Mastodon’s existing “follow hashtag” feature is inadequate.

@evanprodromou When I click on the @_followback link in your blog entry I get a bunch of code.

@the_moep Fedibuzz is great! It normally works as a relay, though. So, you have to be an admin to set it up. But I’ve recently found out you can also follow the accounts, like with tags.pub. So it’s similar in that way. I think it’s a big Fediverse and it’s good to have different services.

@octothorpes Great!

@com There’s a whole section on it in the video!

@johan We’d like to get it to global, but we’re doing it a step at a time.

@blag Great!

@evanprodromou

@nantel @evanprodromou Don't click on it. I haven't built the pages yet. Search for it in Mastodon. I'll fix the link.

I think there's an issue with the follows, at least with NodeBB. Followback didn't follow me back, and the relay won't establish

It's probably just NodeBB being overly strict.