For my previous toot I was looking for appropriate hashtags, #BlackAcademia being one of them. It’s a hashtag I’d seen before, yet neither the search bar nor the suggested in-toot hashtags returned results.
A manual search via the address bar displayed the hashtag, as did the in-app search function on another instance I’m on.
I’ve also noticed that hashtags specific to Black people, regardless of activity, rank low in search. I’m very interested in an explanation as to why.
@daniecarter It's likely due to the still relatively low numbers of Black people in the Fediverse.
I'm seeing more of us recently, but clearly not enough "allies" are boosting these hashtags.
@ricardoharvin @daniecarter Just on some experimentation, it looks like hashtags are sorted by:
1. hashtag length
2. alphabetical
This probably is somewhat informed by the "no algorithm" original design goals of the project, and the, uh, underdeveloped search function. It's an area I think needs the most improvement.
I'd imagine there are some technical limitations there as well. In case you are unaware, you are only searching the copies of data that happen to be included on your instance, based on who your local users have followed.
Just curious, what was your search string where the black hashtag appeared lower?
@daniecarter @ricardoharvin Very interesting. I can't make out what it might be doing on mastodon.social. It doesn't look to be sorted by activity (which seems like it would be the most logical choice)
We definitely have different results:
Danie Carter
Ricardo Harvin
saluk