ALERT
Gargron is writing a Mastodon feature:
"Change hashtags at the end of the post to not be rendered"
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/26260
That seems like a pretty big change. I've got questions, like:
- Why not put them under a "show tags" thing?
- On Tumblr they're visible, but they show you the first line or so by default and then you can click to show the rest. Should we have that?
- At the moment, when something appears in your Home feed because you follow a hashtag, there is no indication about why. If hashtags are hidden, people are going to be even more confused.
I get that people want to not see spammy hashtags at the end of posts, but to make them totally hidden to the reader seems a bit extreme?
Anyway, if you feel similarly, leave a comment on the Github pull request: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/26260 (You might need to make a Github account, but that's pretty easy.)
@woozle ha, I saw that comment from woozalia and thought to myself "hmm I wonder ..." and sure enough it was indeed you.
I made a comment as well:
"As others have pointed out, this seems like it will have a lot of problematic consequences.
What problem is this trying to address, and is there a different way to address it?"
@jdp23 @woozle @cassolotl going to drop in to say that “out‐of‐body hashtags” were an old monsterfork (<https://web.archive.org/web/20190115135415/https://monsterpit.net/about>) feature that were requested and generally liked by the community.
they were implemented and federated basically exactly like this (hashtags at the end of the post were not included in the post contents; on remote servers the post would appear in the hashtag timeline but would not be visible in the post.) i didn’t spend enough time on monsterpit to remember how they worked on monsterpit itself—@aescling do you recall?
anyway @cassolotl you explicitly requested this feature in 2018, just fyi https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/7250
@Lady Haha, amazing, I am not at all surprised. :D That was 5 years ago too, blimey. Needless to say, I don't want this to happen like this now, and I wasn't really into it then either - I guess you can tell from my tone that I was just trying to find an uneasy compromise.
@cassolotl, every discussion between us seems to eventually wind up involving a link to a 2017-8 github issue ... it's almost like of a weird fediverse equivalant of Godwin's law (except without the Nazis of course, a definite plus).
And thanks for the perspectives @Lady So it sounds like the argument in favor of this is readability? If this is something people want I can certainly see providing it as an option. That said I find myself wondering what BlackMastodon thinks of this proposal
@jdp23 @cassolotl the relevant demographic here iirc is independent artists, who rely hugely on hashtags for getting their work out there (it's the only discoverability mechanism mastodon has), but suffer social penalties for doing so (because a lot of fediverse users find long lists of hashtags aesthetically unappealing).
people want mastodon to be an inviting place for indie artists because that was a huge attraction back on twitter (and because, like, more art is good). so they want artists to feel like they have the tools to get their art found (extensive tagging). but they don't want art posts to be very obviously and clearly visually distinctive from typical mastodon culture (which is light on tags), so having-but-hiding the tags felt like a possible alternative.
i think the question is still a bit open as to whether hashtag-based discoverability actually IS the best model for fedi. for example i believe @Curator generally recommends using fewer hashtags and relying more on boosts and grassroots interpersonal connections for getting art out there. but that's where this is coming from.
as i've hopefully said, this is cultural as much as it is technological. so the necessity for this will vary depending on cultural feelings/connotations around tag use. i can only speak for historical white queer mastodon culture there :)
@Lady thanks once again for the clarification. Agreed that the fediverse could be a lot less hostile to indie artists and other content providers -- @Thapsyrensays and I were talking about this a while ago.
I brought up BlackMastodon because hashtags are also key affordances for Black digital practices. And also, when a white dev team making changes that (whatever the intent) mean that people are less likely to see hasthags like BlackMastodon and BLM ... well like I say I wonder if they checked with Black people first!
@jdp23 @Thapsyrensays@mstdn.party @cassolotl mhm. altho i think an important counterpoint to that is that Black Twitter’s (and other marginalized Twitters’) hashtag use was really them taking over an affordance which had not been designed with them in mind, and i can certainly say mastodon’s hashtag implementation wasn’t designed with it in mind either
i definitely think those conversations should stay open, but i also think we have an opportunity for a more active role here. what would a feature which WAS designed with those usecases in mind look like? how do we get there? i think the conversation should be driven by the usecases more than the technologies, and don't want us to get stuck with the current hashtag system as a local maximum when maybe we could be doing much better
practically speaking tho, with mastodon development being what it is, that runs the risk of certain usecases being “planned” but deprioritized, and then used as justification for stripping away those features in existing software. like reddit’s whole “it's okay that we broke mod tooling and accessibility, because we have better features for that roadmapped” thing. the replacement has to come first. so i don't think you're wrong to call it out
@Lady @cassolotl 💯. As usual, I completely agree. The challenge is how to get there -- a more open design discussion, considering multiple usecases and all these different perspectives -- from here.
@jdp23 i’ve been saying that mastodon needs to actually take the time to identify distinct user roles and perform real community outreach since january of 2017 😩
@Lady and I've been boosting you and others saying that (as well as saying it myself) since a few months later. I'm starting to question just how closely they're listening.
The time's clearly right for forks that have open design discussions with community involvement, prioritize safety, and don't have a BDFL governance model. I kind of think of the current environment around Mastodon as a super-saturated solution, just waiting for the right seed crystal.
@jdp23 i think the answer there is a good instance that connects its members both on-network and off-. mastodon has strengths but it can't do everything. it's geared towards public discussion, not getting things done.
and the “getting things done” part needs just as much organization and facilitation as the discussion does. i think we’re going to be stuck until we can get ourselves an instance which can take on both. but most people view mastodon as a hangout place, not a working place. it's really hard to get people to invest their time and energy into the latter part.
@Lady agreed. We need a "discussion AND getting things done" solution for the fediverse.
Although that being said, now's as good a tie to start prototyping one as any -- probably initially with an "instance" that's a mix of different software (some of which might not currently be federated) while working through what it would take to design one (in a community-driven way) for reals.
🤔