When a Mastodon relay is placed behind Cloudflare, the relay often stops receiving posts from remote instances. The core cause is that Cloudflare’s reverse proxy strips or modifies the HTTP signature headers that Mastodon uses to verify incoming federated requests. Without these headers intact, the relay sees every incoming activity as unauthenticated and silently drops … Read more
Mastodon relays are servers that forward public posts from one instance to many others, boosting federation visibility without manual follows. If your small Mastodon instance struggles to discover content from other servers, a relay can pull in posts automatically. This guide explains how to set up a Mastodon-compatible relay on a Raspberry Pi 4 or … Read more
Mastodon relays can stop forwarding new posts after a period of inactivity. When a relay connection becomes idle, the remote server may close the TCP socket without notice. Your Mastodon instance continues to show the relay as connected in the admin panel, but no new content flows through. This article explains how to detect stale … Read more
Mastodon relays are servers that broadcast public posts from multiple instances to your instance. They help populate your federated timeline with content from many communities. However, some relays may carry spam, low-quality posts, or content that does not align with your instance’s rules. This article explains how to configure Mastodon to reject posts from specific … Read more
When you run a Mastodon server, you decide how posts from other instances reach your users. You can either subscribe to a relay or ask users to follow accounts directly. Each method affects your server bandwidth and the quality of content your users see. This article explains the technical differences between relays and direct follows. … Read more
If your Mastodon instance uses a public relay, your local timeline can become cluttered with posts from servers that have no connection to your community. A public relay indiscriminately distributes all messages from all connected servers, which can overwhelm small instances with irrelevant content. Switching to a private relay gives you control over which remote … Read more
As a Mastodon instance admin, you manage the relay that your server uses to exchange public posts with other instances. A relay distributes your local public posts to all subscribed instances and brings their public posts into your federated timeline. Without a clear view of who subscribes to your relay, you cannot audit federation partners … Read more
Mastodon relays let instances share public posts with each other without following every user individually. Without a tag filter, a relay forwards all public posts from every connected instance, which can flood your local timeline with irrelevant content. Building a topic-specific relay with a tag filter solves this by forwarding only posts that contain specific … Read more
When a Mastodon relay connection breaks, your instance stops receiving public posts from federated servers that depend on that relay. This usually happens because the relay server went offline, changed its endpoint, or the subscription token expired. Without a working relay, your local timeline becomes quieter and users may miss trending content from outside instances. … Read more
If you run a Mastodon instance for a niche community such as vintage computer collectors, bird watchers, or indie game developers, your users may feel isolated. The local timeline shows only posts from your instance, and the federated timeline can be overwhelming or irrelevant. A Mastodon relay solves this by automatically pulling in public posts … Read more