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.
