Everything in your main "Home" timeline on Mastodon is there for one of these reasons:

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

Everything in your main "Home" timeline on Mastodon is there for one of these reasons:

-An account you follow posted it
-An account you follow boosted it
-The post contains a hashtag you follow
-An account you follow replied to an account you also follow
-An account you follow replied to itself

Nothing else gets in your main feed, it's just these things.

If hashtags are at the end of a post they are displayed in a smaller font below the post, which some people miss.

#FediTips #Mastodon

[j_j@muenchen.social]

@FediTips Wait? What about a reply of someone I follow to a post from someone I don't follow? #Fediverse

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@j_j

You only see replies if they are by someone you follow to someone else you also follow, or someone you follow replying to themselves, or someone you follow boosting a reply by anyone.

[nikatjef@mastodon.acm.org]

@FediTips
I am glad you specified "home" timeline as there are multiple timelines and two of them will show content unrelated to what you listed. For example the "local" timeline shows all posts made by someone on your server. I forget one the other one is or what it shows, but it is extremely active whenever I look at it

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@nikatjef

Yeah, I've tried to go through all the different timelines in the guide at https://fedi.tips/what-are-the-local-federated-home-timelines-how-do-i-stop-them-scrolling-too-quickly/