Mastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.

Terence Eden

@gunstick because they put tracking links on the things they share from their official account. They cannot see what random people post.

Godfrey642

@Edent @tanavit
I agree.
One of the things i find hard about Mastodon is finding and keeping a track on ppl in interested in.

Following doesn't necessarily mean you get their posts popping up in your feed. Which is a shame bc Im missing out on a lot of interesting info and links.

datum (n=1)

@log @Edent I came here to say 1) this, and

2) in your image the no-referrer count doesn't even show. If volume is below 1% - well I guess this is a bad argument: if fedi WERE a significant source then it MIGHT be showing as no-referrer in your top 10, so - 1) still though, as log says!

Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle

@Edent @eltonfc There's some discussion here:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/21795

Matt Fantinel

@richlv @Edent it would make the instance’s URL known. A lot of instances have either very few or a single user, which would expose them as the individuals who clicked the link very quickly.

Terence Eden

@fantinel @richlv then those instances should stay private if they want to.
But surely those of us who don't want to stay private should have a choice?

Terence Eden

@datum @log approximately 50% of my traffic has no referrer.

That might be from email, Mastodon, people typing the links in directly etc.

If people have chosen to preserve their privacy, that's cool with me.

pcbeard

@Edent I’m much more interested in who I follow than who follows me. Mastodon provides everything I need. And I follow fewer and fewer high volume posters these days, so it’s all working out quite well. Social media should be a hobby not a vocation.

Terence Eden

@pcbeard ok. But you do realise that not everyone is you, right?

pcbeard

@Edent I do.

Terence Eden

@pcbeard so your point is…?

Ulrike Hahn

@Godfrey642 @Edent @tanavit the ability to get notifications to specific people’s posts is a really helpful feature for me

Rihards Olups

@Edent @fantinel
Oh yeah, one-user instances would definitely benefit from that. And maybe instances for users in regions with oppression etc.

I was sure URLs shared on Masto show up with referrer, if only splintered between all the instances... But apparently site owners have no way to see any Masto impact at all (no, tracking params do not help in any way to discover the network in the first place).

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@Edent The funny part for me is that, functionally, "no referrer" means "Mastodon."

Straight up. Essentially everything else identifies itself - and more importantly, everywhere I put stuff does - so I look for no referrer and that's my Mastodon peeps because there are virtually no exceptions to that.

So... in a funny way... it doesn't even work? Because "no referrer" just means "oh it's Mastodon" which means I know where it's from anyway. xD

Terence Eden

@moira errr? No?

Links from email, WhatsApp, manually copied, and a hundred other sources all contribute to that total. You've no way of knowing how many are from Mastodon and how many are from a bookmark.

GeofCox

@Godfrey642

You have to 'curate' your feed yourself - there is, thank goodness, no algorithm doing it for you.

This can be awkward, it's true - I feel bad about not following back a lot of Americans, for example - but if I did I'd lose my feed's balance between English and French, America and Europe, etc...

@UlrikeHahn @Edent @tanavit

Ulrike Hahn

@GeofCox lists are helpful with that: content you would like to see, but don’t want in your main feed

Godfrey642

@UlrikeHahn @Edent @tanavit
How do you do that ?
(Get notifications to specific ppl ?)

Ulrike Hahn

@Godfrey642 @Edent @tanavit

see here: https://fedi.tips/how-to-be-notified-when-someone-posts-on-mastodon/

Anders Norén

@Edent
Is this a hypothesis of yours or have you heard someone say this about their own or their organisation's participation? Because everyone I have ever seen saying "Mastodon didn't work out for me, I'm leaving for Bluesky" never really participated here to begin with. They registered, posted a few times and then went quiet. I doubt they thought about referrer statistics at all.