Thu 21 November 2024

In Part I, I spoke humorously on the linguistic value of hashtags. I'd like to now go over why hashtags are useful for search on the Fediverse, and why global search is a bad idea.

Reply guys. That's it. End of blog p— Oh okay, okay!

I've noticed that there are some features that recent Xitter refugees have been clamoring for. Some of these (like better moderation or more robust blocking features) are definitely warranted. There are a couple "features" that have been missing from Mastodon by design, however, and I rather wish that people were more cognizant of that.

The reason that Mastodon hasn't had search thus far (and why it will always be opt-in) is to reduce the potential for harassment. Picture this scenario:

Let's say that you really hate chocolate.

You have friends that also hate chocolate, and among your friends that don't agree with you, you still have kinship, understanding, and mutual respect, even humor.

You just had an amazing dessert of cheesecake at your favorite restaurant with your friends and look across the table to one of your friends eating a slice of chocolate lava cake. Smiling archly, you decide to troll your friend. You reach into your pocket, pull out your phone, launch the HypoSoc app to load The Hypothetical Social Network, and you post,

🙅‍♂️ Chocolate Hater @Choc_h8r997
Just saw a dude down a huge slice of chocolate lava cake...
DISGUSTING!

You nudge your chocolate-enjoying friend, and point to the status on your phone. You share a laugh and go on to enjoy your evening.

The next morning, you wake up, stretch, and while taking a leisurely walk around the block, you glance at your phone and see that your HypoSoc notifications have blown up. Someone random person performed a search for "chocolate," saw your tongue-in-cheek post, became incensed, and decided to "make you famous," posting a screenshot on ChocoChan.

You are now getting death threats and disturbing explicit pictures of chocolate figurines in various poses via DMs.

Ok, that seems quite ridiculous, but that kind of scenario plays out on social media daily. People will go searching for what they love and what they hate, and will often react badly to what they find.

So what's the alternative? No search at all? Well, that would stink for discoverability, and would make the process of becoming established on the Fediverse much slower and more limited.

What if you could decide whether or not you wanted each toot to be searchable? What if you could decide whether or not you wanted each word in each toot to be searchable? That's precisely the function a hashtag performs: allowing you to manually opt-in to searches on a very granular level.

In the above scenario, let's imagine you weren't in a trolling mood. Let's say you actually wanted to say something quasi-serious, like:

🙅‍♂️ Chocolate Hater @Choc_h8r997
Not hating this time, honest. Maybe it's just my taste buds being *weird*, but I just don't get why people are so crazy about #chocolate. I've tried so many different kinds, and I just don't care for the taste.

The tone here is completely different: you're attempting to communicate seriously, and because you are desiring to initiate a real conversation, you throw the hash symbol (#) in front of "chocolate" to make it searchable/discoverable.

You've opted in, and you retain control. Now you decide whether you want the world at large knocking at the front door of your toot, or if you want to keep the scope more limited.

Using tons of hashtags (as I myself am wont to do now and again) in a post may look obnoxious and attention-grabby, but there is a very valid reason for doing so: you are participating in the explicit opt-in nature to discovery and search on the Fediverse.

Note: This article has a Part III!

Category: Tech Tagged: Computing Ethics Federated Services Language Non-religious post Non-technical post Philosophy WritingMonth