@admin wanted a public / boostable version of my explanation of viewing tags on other instances shenanigans, so! weird fedi facts of the day:

1) instances can choose whether or not their federated timeline is visible to logged out users or not! For any instance running Mastodon 4.0+ this is (if visible) the default page when you type in an instance URL. for instances running mastodon forks or older code try instance.name/explore (if someone wants to chime in in the comments with the equivilant info for pixelfed etc please do!)

2) if an instance makes the federated timeline visible, it also technically makes hashtags visible for that instance (presumably bc tag searches are just filtered versions of the federated tl?) there's not a real UI for doing this, but they're visible at instance.name/tags/YourTagHere (eg https://fandom.ink/tags/ao3tagoftheday or https://mastodon.art/tags/mxtx )

besides browser bookmarks there's no way to follow/save your search so not terribly convenient, but if you're just trying to figure out which instance is best for cdrama fans or whatever its a decently effective tactic