Chris TrottierThis is why social discovery on the Fediverse doesn’t work well.
Members of marginalized communities want to find affinity.
Hashtags don’t work.
Hashtags don’t work well for social discovery because:
1. They can refer to multiple things. For example, when you use #apple is it for the fruit or company?
2. They’re unmoderated and can be used by anyone for whatever reason
3. They’re awful for long phrases
4. They can be easily spammed
5. They don’t actually signify “opt-in” but can just as easily signify something meta
Oblomov@atomicpoet honestly that's a bit flimsy. If one's aim is, as in the screenshot, to find people, hashtags do work —as long as people do put then in their posts— because through the hashtag you still find people to follow, even if the hashtag is too ambiguous to be worth following, or if you need to search for multiple variants of the hashtag and scroll through a few posts.
Rufus J. Cooter@oblomov @atomicpoet right, but you understand how much work "...-as long as people..." is doing here, right? I mean, that's an, "Assume a can opener..." level qualification
@RufusJCooter @atomicpoet yeah but people not using them doesn't mean they don't work. Condoms are extremely effective at avoiding unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs, but if you don't use them you don't get those benefits. You may claim that you don't want to use them for whatever reason (that's up to you (and your partner(s) in the condom case)), but any claim that they don't work is easily rebuked.
@RufusJCooter @atomicpoet so on the contrary anyone finding hashtags lacking because of low usage should be encouraging others to use them more