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As I understand it, the way these groups work is - you follow them, and they boost any post they're tagged in onto your home timeline (or any lists you add them to).

Since hashtag searches don't work across all posts on all Mastodon instances like how you can search all of Twitter at once, this is a kind of workaround to make sure you see posts from any instance!

To be clear, I barely did anything! You can make your own group just as easily as making a hashtag. Just type @[group name]@a.gup.pe in your toot, or search for it, and then it'll exist and you can follow it! Though, like with hashtags, you'll want to get other people to post with it, lol.

@gekidasa you literally just tag them or search for them, lol, and then they exist. No one moderates them. It's basically like making a hashtag!

@biasto_bias what if someone signs up with that as a username?

@gekidasa they can't, because the domain a.gup.pe doesn't allow signups!

On Mastodon, you can have Dave@DomainName and Dave@OtherDomain, and that's just fine. If Dave 1's friends start typing @/Dave in their toot, Dave 2's name might come up as an option, but then they can just select the correct Dave (just @/Dave on its own doesn't work as a tag).

@/sangcheng@/fandom.ink can still exist, even if you make the Sangcheng group, because the domains are different!

I hope that makes sense?

@biasto_bias oh so it’s like an account on a magical group instance?

@gekidasa I'm not sure what you mean, I'm sorry! a.gup.pe is an instance specifically for hosting groups, if that's what you're asking?

@biasto_bias yeah, that’s what I mean