@BeAware@social.beaware.live

The #Fediverse / #Mastodon promise of a feed without algorithm was always at best a stopgap for this exact reason.

#Hashtags were the most powerful of the weak solutions to allow users to improve their experiences against the firehose of chronological sort, but they were never a great solution.

Users have the incentive to abuse them, as you're seeing. Or at least to misuse them. As the platform grows, the norms that held them together as a solution would inevitably be challenged, and they'd become less and less effective over time.

The way I always saw it, hashtags bought Fediverse platforms time to develop something better, but unfortunately there was all too little focus on looking for that replacement.

I grind my ax once again that developers need more focus on empowering users, including empowering them to shape their experiences beyond hashtags.