Threads has hashtags now

clgoh@lemmy.ca to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 36 points –
Threads has hashtags now
theverge.com

"Tags work a little differently than hashtags do on platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). When composing a Threads post, you start a tag by tapping the # symbol and then typing out your topic. But instead of being limited to just one word, you can type out a whole phrase (with spaces!) and add special characters, according to Mosseri. However, you can only make one tag per post."

I wonder how the tags will work if they federate with ActivityPub.

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Those aren't hashtags, those aren't even tags. That's a freeform category system. What's old is new again.

instead of being limited to just one word, you can type out a whole phrase

That's...not how tags work...

Isn't that how tumblr has been doing tags for years?

#Yep finally they can all have their multi paragraphs long tags and have them working as they want them to work

No need to shout!

Where was the shouting?

Oh that's weird, my client is showing your hash-prefixed comment as a markdown heading (which I thought Lemmy was supposed to do), but when I look at it in the web ui it's just normal text with a literal hash symbol

That's how it looks on my end too, I wanted it to look like the tumbler tags. I wasn't aware it was supposed to be a mark down, would have changed it if I knew, but Lemmy didn't really seem to know that either. Except for the one you uses.

Wouldn't know, never been there

Me neither, but you see plenty of screenshots. My point being that twitter/mastodon-style hash tags aren't the only way of doing tags. The thing Threads are suggesting that make it not a tag is the fact you can only have one!

#what bro you dont like sentences why not its good for everyone to be able to just do whatever they want its totes okay because then you can like be like really specific about your hashtag so only like minded people can see your stuff and you can make real connections fr fr no cap

Edit: JFC it's going to be so stupid.

They're allowing hashtags to have multiple words in order to make them uncompatible with both Xitter and Mastodon...

That wouldn't make them incompatible with the fediverse. ActivityPub can support tags with spaces, even though no current fediverse platform allows it. A post with a hashtag with spaces would still federate to other services and if that services is robust enough, should still be linked up so that you can click it to see the tag feed.

PeerTube allows spaces in its tags, they get stripped out at one end or the other when a video federates to Mastodon to make them compatible.

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There can be only one per post?

That is a magazine (like on /kbin), not a hashtag!

Would be cool now thinking if there was a way to view tags as magazines on Lemmy

So they forked mastodon and gutted the features and are now reimplementing them in a way that's fundamentally incompatible with upstream? Sounds a lot like something Silicon Valley would do.

Threads does not appear to be a fork of Mastodon or anything else.

It also doesn't federate yet and I'm not convinced it's actually going to, so I think posts about it might be off-topic for a community about the Fediverse.

I also think the federation promise was just all smoke and mirrors to let the European Union allow them to publish the app.

I don't think we will ever see proper federation on Threads, even though I'd surely like it.

I think it was probably as much to compete with Bluesky, which also says it will have federation (with its own protocol) Soon^tm^ as anything.

If Bluesky actually starts federating, I think there's a good chance Threads will.

Threads, however, has explicitly promised Mastodon integration, so it won't use a proprietary protocol.

What is really good for everyone already using the Fediverse as it doesn't mean as much work when it comes to bringing Threads & Mastodon compatibility. The multi-word tags are a cool feature but will have to looked at once Federated.

really love bluesky i just hold they either do both protocols or make an activitypub bridge. i think that all the alternative networks working together is the best way to prevent post twitter special network splintering

I'm sure if Bluesky doesn't create something the Fediverse will have someone create a bridge protocol opensource to allow for easy integration into these systems.

For the EU the abilities to read posts without an account and delete a Threads account independently of the IG one was enough. Federation had nothing to do with it. Threads would not be able to launch without federation, had this been a mandate.

Zuckerberg just posted this on Threads. Federation seems to be coming relatively soon.

Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol. Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I'm pretty optimistic about this.

It's to good to be true, there's going to be a trick for sure

As they haven't said they aren't coming to the Fediverse and if anything say they are still looking to Federate it's still on-topic as of the moment but yes it feels like they are kicking the can down the road or have lost it completely and just don't want to tell anyone yet.

Truth Social is a Mastodon fork.

Threads is just Instagram with text posts and a different representation of replies.

Tags are a workaround for bad search systems. They've been a solution looking for a problem since platforms started getting better at search.

Imho, Mastodon should be using hashtags like subreddits/lemmy-communities (they have moderators who can control what gets posted under that hashtag) then they'd have a real reason to exist on that platform now that they've got proper search, especially since a F/OSS platform like Mastodon has difficulty with moderating.

I use hashtags on Mastodon all the time. They're definitely useful and easier than subcommunities.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Tags — basically hashtags with a twist — are now rolling out globally on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday.

Tags work a little differently than hashtags do on platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

When composing a Threads post, you start a tag by tapping the # symbol and then typing out your topic.

“If you share on Threads, [tags are] a great way to help connect with people who are interested in the topics you’re talking about,” Mosseri says.

I like Meta’s implementation here, even the single-tag limit, as it seems like a smart way to prevent annoying hashtag spam.

That said, we’ll have to wait and see if users actually adopt the tags so that they can become a useful way to find conversations about a topic.


The original article contains 222 words, the summary contains 133 words. Saved 40%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

as a tumblr user for about ten years now i wish more socials did multi word tags

also i really hope threads does activitypub soon. i love threads but i little too be able to combine socials and follow the more mainstream people on threads as well as the people i follow on mastodon

Yeah I really do hope they focus on federate in the near future as well as it will allow a wider audience of people to join the Fediverse without having to explain it. Knowing they are still working on the platform is at least a slight positive to them wanting to make it a go to platform for people.

So the Tumblr tags will finally reach their true form.

I've never really used Tumblr but it does sound like a cool fix, hope other Fediverse platform may consider it in the future.

Unless there's bigger news you've not mentioned, this has nothing to do with the fediverse.

Threads is planning to federate, so it adopting more Fediverse-compatible features is relevant.

But this doesn't look like it will be compatible with current ActivityPub, right?

I don't see why not. Mastodon could just translate multi-word hashtags into underscored hashtags. There's already some unsupported features from forks like Firefish that get translated, like emote-reactions register on Mastodon as favorites, etc.

ActivityPub can support tags with spaces, even though no fediverse platform allows you to write tags like that. The name of the tag can be pretty much whatever you want, as long as it has a valid URL.