“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.

  • key@lemmy.keychat.org
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    1 year ago

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

    • fujiwood@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      #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.

  • Scrollone@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

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

    • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Scrollone@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Zak@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

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

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

          • Scrollone@feddit.it
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            1 year ago

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

          • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            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

        • woelkchen@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • clgoh@lemmy.caOP
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      Truth Social is a Mastodon fork.

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

  • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • kpw@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

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

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    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

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    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!

  • kbal@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

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

    • Chozo@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

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

        • Chozo@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.