I like @gargron's explanation of where trending hashtags can be useful. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/7702#issuecomment-394019250
That GitHub thread is also super tiresome to read. I had the same question as somebody else: “How does abuse via trending tag work? If someone wanted to use a trending tag to abuse someone, how would they go about that?” The answer given was “Multiple examples of the potential for abuse have been raised in this thread and elsewhere.” Unfortunately I only saw statements asserting that it was possible, not examples of how to do it. Does anybody have links?
@kensanata well, abusers send bots to work to make their tags the top trend?
@steckerhalter Yeah, but my feeling was, to harass an individual, they would have to mention them. And thus, the harassment doesn’t depend on the hashtag in the first place. But I now saw an example where the hashtag isn’t what I would call harassment which I take to be about individual targets but just general racism – and then it’s the admin playing whack-a-mole. Ok, that is undesirable no matter what you call it.
Ah, this example of trending anything abuse makes sense: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/271#issuecomment-394083593
@kensanata This is how it works on Twitter, anyone can use any hashtag and I don't see a need for regulation here.
How could moderating/curating/white-listing trending tags be better than sorting it out, counterargue or ridicule "unwanted" contents?
This raises so many questions like who will elect the gatekeepers and what are the filter criteria?
If content violates community rules -> delete/warn/ban user but please don't open Pandora's censorship infrastructure box.
@encarsia Well, as far as I am concerned I just didn’t understand why people would object to the feature unless they felt it was frivolous. But they kept claiming harassment opportunities and that I didn’t understand. Now I do. I might still want trending hashtags to be implemented just out of curiosity. We can always remove it later. The work is already done, after all.
@kensanata I read the thread too and I agree with you, it seems a contrived point. But personally I don't want trends on my instance. So I hope the user will have the option to disable it.