#Hashtags are great. They're not "cool" anymore, and idiots abuse them; but they enable platforms to be self-organized by the users without much tech skill.
With all of the anarchists etc. here, that kind of grass-roots understanding should be implicit.
#Trending #tags are BOTH crucial and dangerous. #Trends bring people into conversations, help onboard new users, and keep people coming back.
But harassment and abuse need to be fought at the platform level.
How can we have BOTH?
@JigmeDatse That's a good point, spam filtering methods could definitely be used at *least* to decide which tags should be trending, and maybe even to auto-mute or outright ban bad trending ones.
@byronalley I think currently (with the "trending tags" as they are coming out, and current tools for handling abusive content) we are well on our way to keeping things "safe." Though the fact that I've just mute/banned about 5 or so people today, with some of them reported...
Instead of enabling #hashtag #trending vs. making it hard to find tags and convos, what's the third option? How do we get the good without the bad?
1) Make hastags 1st class citizens, like posts -- eg. being able to report, block or mute them?
2) Instances blocking hashtags?
3) Auto-banning users by hashtag?
4) A downvoting system like reddit? Eg. upvote or downvote a tag to affect its trendiness?
5) Could trending tags actually *combat* abuse?
@byronalley I think we *easily* can have both on Mastodon. Because we *already* have the latter, so maybe what you have pointed out to *me* is that we can have the former.
Now *maybe* it will get some point that on a platform level #Hashtags, will have to have some form of "exclusion" or "limits" placed on them on a platform level.
The question is, can you do so, without causing problems, and the answer is yes. I'm thinking spam filtering doing that.