@dragonfi Federation happens on a per-post level. If someone on a big instance - let's say mastodon.social - follows you, ALL of your posts are federated to mastodon.social because that one user's account is following you. Then if someone *else* on mastodon.social searches for a hashtag you've used in one of your posts, they'll find your post(s) using that hashtag. So it helps, but only on instances that your account is federating to.