Mastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.
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Mastodon enforces a "noreferrer" on all external links.
I have mixed feelings about that.
As a blogger, I want to see *where* visitors are coming from. I also like to see (and sometimes join in) with the conversations they're having.
But, I get that people want privacy and don't want to "leak" where they're visiting from.
Is it such a bad thing to tell a website "I was referred from this specific server"?
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@Edent I think in terms of protecting small instances from external raids and similar esp when they link to controversial things, the balance is probably right and the upsides of revealing are q limited. it’s a pretty fragile network…
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@mikarv All I know is that my referrer logs show hundreds of hits from Twitter, Facebook, and now BlueSky - absolutely nothing from Mastodon.
If I'm building a strategy based on where my audience is, Mastodon will be ignored.
It's one of the (many) reasons why large organisations don't appear on the Fediverse; it is invisible to them.
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@WestLawns you haven't read the thread properly.
External websites don't receive an HTTP Referer header when people click on links to them from Mastodon.
That means those sites don't know Masto is a source of traffic.
So they won't bother investigating it / investing time in it.
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@Edent thank you for explaining.
I did not understand what you point was. -
Terence Edenreplied to Terence Eden last edited by [email protected]
Two years later.
Want to know one of the major reasons Mastodon didn't catch on with journalists and large website owners?
It is *invisible* in referrer statistics.
Here's my blog from the last month.
BlueSky now sends me more traffic than Bing.
How much traffic does Mastodon send? It is impossible to know due to the "noreferrer" header in all links.
(I'm not saying your privacy isn't important. But you can't grow a community if no-one knows you exist.)
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You can build a community by "mouth to ear" which is as simple as retooting (and not favoriting).
I guess the community is better.
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@Edent Interesting, hadn’t considered that.
I wonder if there are Mastodon clients that auto-add UTM codes. That’d be *something* at least.
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@tanavit how do people find the community in the first place, if no one tells them about it?
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People only care about me, when I give them some points to count?
What about: Nope!
(a.k.a. Fuck off!) -
Christian von Schack 🇳🇴replied to Terence Eden last edited by
@Edent This is interesting. I started an account for the journal I work for; I didn’t expect much traffic, but none at all surprised me. I never thought to check the HTML, though.
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@AdeptVeritatis more like "people only know about me if I tell them I exist".
Do you get that difference?
I fully support your right to be private. But you do understand that some of us like talking to interesting people outside our normal social spheres, right?
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@Edent this presumes that there being no journalists on mastodon is something that people on mastodon see as a problem. As opposed to a significant benefit.
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I do by randomly looking in the "Direct Flow".
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@Edent It isn’t just the referrals - we have developed clever ways of figuring out why stories performed well (or didn’t) - it’s the fact that reach is intrinsically limited on Mastodon. Mastodon is not big social media - and that’s both by design and OK. The interconnected small communities are something to celebrate instead of making case after case about why the numbers and features are different.
Many journalists still use it, just not for reach. -
@alexwilson I agree.
Lots of people like living in a small village. But most of their kids "brain drain" to the cities. -
@tanavit but how do people get on to the "Direct Flow" if they've never heard of it?
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@whimsy but the issue isn't just limited to journalists.
Why would a musician or author focus their time here if they can't see a positive impact on their reach?
Why would your friends come here if they can't also follow journalists that they like?It is fine if you don't see the need for specific users, but that denies choice to everyone else.
