When you first set up a single-user Mastodon instance, the federated timeline is empty. Without existing followers or follows, the server receives almost no public posts from other instances. A Mastodon relay solves this by subscribing to a shared pool of public posts from participating servers. This article explains how to configure a relay on … Read more
When a Mastodon relay you administer or subscribe to suddenly shows a drop in activity, your instance timeline may feel empty or slow. This often happens because the relay has lost its connection to remote instances, the relay server itself has a configuration error, or the relay has been rate-limited by other servers. This article … Read more
Mastodon relays push public posts from one instance to many others. When your instance connects to a relay, you expect a steady stream of federated content. But sometimes the relay stops delivering posts or delivers duplicates. You need a way to verify the connection is alive and working correctly. This article explains how to use … Read more
Mastodon relays are designed to boost content distribution across the fediverse, but they can be weaponized to amplify spam, unwanted advertisements, or malicious posts to a much larger audience than a single account could reach. When a relay relays a post to your instance, all local subscribers of that relay see the content, even if … Read more
Mastodon relays distribute public posts from one server to many others. When you administer an instance, you need to know which relay provider delivers the most content without delays. Throughput — the volume of posts a relay can forward per minute — varies widely between providers. This article explains how to measure and compare relay … Read more
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