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The problem with the problems with hashtags
16 years after their invention, is it time for a change?
I published my thoughts on Bluesky’s proposals for how the decentralized network might tackle hashtags about a month ago. Days later, Threads launched (notably without hashtags, an omission I dutifully pointed out to Mark Zuckerberg).
Gradually I discovered that people on Threads tended to be skeptical-to-hostile towards hashtags, likely due to hashtag abuse on Instagram.
As I’ve come to understand it, here’s how hashtags went awry:
Hashtags are a kind of temporary autonomous zone — a disposable, digital context from which people came and went to coordinate around a specific event or moment — often connected through IRL experiences. Indeed, back when social media was smaller and more intimate, tracking events called BarCamps was the hashtag’s original use case.
But that was a simpler time.
As the popularity of social media grew, platforms established new aggregated contexts like search and trending topics to help people explore everything going on. These spaces relied on algorithms to sort through and rank vast swathes of data. Since algorithms are just math, marketers (and spammers) figured out how to make their content look more appealing to the algos. Spamming hashtags proved one reliable method, since algos couldn’t easily discern appropriate from parasitic hashtags.
What worked for our Twitter town square didn’t work when it became Times Square.
Skip to the end for six ideas to improve hashtags on platforms like Mastodon.
Eugen Rochko responded to this post to clarify that only hashtags preceded by a new line will be moved to the hashtag bar, nullifying the specifics of the #OldManMessina example below. Additionally, Vince Aggrippino comment was not accurate. I’ve made adjustments accordingly.
The hashtag turns 16 in two weeks — and for the most part, hashtag creation hasn’t changed: you type a # character immediately followed by a word or phrase without spaces; you publish, and any added hashtags are turned into links.
