Why are Mastodon's trending hashtags so ... dull?

As a new user, I’m enjoying Mastodon’s vibe so far but the one thing that is a letdown is the trending hashtags. I’ve been checking them regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seems like they’re pretty much always like this.

Even on days with big news stories, people on Mastodon are only talking about what day of the week it is like company employees on some internal message board?

Is there anything that can be done to liven them up a bit?

stackPeek,
@stackPeek@kbin.social avatar

I don't know, but to me this isn't really dull. I wonder if it is matched with actual current events? Like, for example, if an earthquake, and similar hashtags will show on trending section

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

That doesn’t seem to be the case. For example, on the day that Threads was launched there was plenty of people tagging #Threads, but it wasn’t mentioned in this list.

MyOpinion,

The hashtags are near unreadable and almost never interesting. Please capitalize each word.

Santcuff,

camelCaseForTheWin

Marxine,
@Marxine@lemmy.ml avatar

?

manitcor,
@manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech avatar

ive noticed hashtags are not very popular likely due to them being overdone.

like lemmy, your mastadon exp is highly dependent upon your instance.

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

You’re right, it is.

However, I’m on a server (fosstodon.org) that has an active Local thread and plenty of users and the trending hashtags still look like this pretty much every day.

manitcor,
@manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech avatar

for hashtags id say its just not popular, they have fallen out of favor in a lot of groups on twitter as well, for example if you want to know about AI research, not a single AI researcher worth anything is posting with hashtags. You have to find and follow them.

Mastodon being even more indie is just reflecting this growing preference. Hashtags are tools of marketers thanks to twitter and fb, they won’t go away but thier cringe factor in casual social posts is likely to stick around for a bit.

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Isn’t that a problem for Mastodon, then, since it’s far more reliant on hashtags to drive discoverability due to the lack of algorithm?

manitcor,
@manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech avatar

maybe, communities and forums worked great for decades before hashtags became common. Some might say its a cope for cheap and poorly developed search algos soon to be replaced by much more sophisticated systems.

tony,

It’s fundamental to mastodon… you can subscribe to hashtags, you can search hashtags, but you can’t (usually) search posts directly. That works for the most part, but does limit discoverability slightly.

Groups seem to be the new hotness, though… there are some 3rd party implementations already but a proper implementation in the core is upcoming: joinmastodon.org/roadmap

sbv,

The UIs make adding hashtags difficult, and then Mastodon users (like me) say fOlLoW HaShTaGs.

The truth is that Mastodon needs better discovery tools built in.

Skyler, (edited )
@Skyler@kbin.social avatar

If you have any specific hobbies / fandoms / communities you're interested in, you could see if there are instances specific to those interests you could migrate your account to. The local feed and local hashtags are sometimes way more interesting if you're on an instance you jive with.

Prandom_returns,

Because mastodon doesn’t have an algo that promotes division and controversial topics. These hashtags are what normal, everyday people talk about. Drama isn’t its strongest side.

Asafum,

Are you saying that Lemmy does have those algorithms? Because this shit is never boring lol so many instances I never wanted to see or know existed…

Slightly related: how many freaking instances of “yiff” shit do we need!? I couldn’t believe I was STILL seeing it after I blocked like 7 separate instances lol

Prandom_returns,

Lemmy ““promotes”” upvoted stuff.

Mastodon “Trending” is just stuff that wasn’t talked about, suddenly being talked about. That’s why constantly popular things don’t appear on Trending, but things like “BigBoobFridayWhatever” (or equivalent) gets trending (people don’t use the hashtag for a week, and everyone use it for that day). I see how they thought it’s perfect for world-wide events, but it just end-up being a bunch of “weekly” stuff.

tony,

BigBoobFriday has to happen.

GeekFTW,
@GeekFTW@kbin.social avatar

I will make it happen.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

Needs more alliteration.

HonkTonkWoman,

H4Lambda,

Furries invade every tech space because they’re all programmers for some reason. Must have something to do with being bullied as a kid and/or never seeing boobs irl. I know because I like their porn but not their identity, I’d never wear a suit but a cat is fine too

CarlsIII,

I guess the reality is that I want at least SOME controversy. I don’t know why the only two choices have to be “fascism-enabling hellscape” or “nobody saying anything interesting ever.” There has to be at least some possible middle ground!

Prandom_returns,

I agree. The Trending algorithm needs improvement. Luckily, we can do that ourselves.

ko4la,

explain how

Prandom_returns,

By creating a pull request in Github. (Don’t yet angry, that was supposed to be a lighthearted joke)

Rabbithole,

I can imagine some alpha-cunt Tate-esque grifter selling courses on how to "Just Shout at People" like it's some sort of magic spell that mysteriously makes everything that you want happen.

Selling it like it's the hidden secret sauce to the universe or whatever, rather than just being a dick to everyone.

Would the community even be any worse, I wonder? :)

mojo,

i angy 😡

superflippy,

I agree. I want to see people’s opinions on the news of the day. By the way, I recommend following @BlackAzizAnansi if you want a little controversy. He was one of my favorite posters from Twitter & has gone all-in on Mastodon.

Zaktor,

I think the #tuesday hashtag isn’t really what normal people talk about, but probably people gaming the system to get on a reliably trending hashtag.

mojo,

yeah sounds like boring shit. I get that already from talking to actual people, not virtue signalling boomers on mastodon

the lack of algo reduces the quality of content to this garbage, but this is the same people who think more content is bad as well. I don’t want some breaking or interesting post to be hidden by some random person posting completely meaningless garbage

Prandom_returns,

You sound like you might enjoy TikTok more.

mojo,

Yeah it’s either useless boring small talk on Mastodon, or zoomer tik tok. Absolutely no middle.

Prandom_returns,

*useless only if you have no interests. There’s plenty of people talking hobbies and interests. If you’re just shooting shit, I agree, it’s boring. And no, there’s no middle. Maybe Instagram is the middleground?

sbv,

It’s boring and shitty. It’s hard to find interesting stuff. Good luck finding trending/newsworthy events.

noodlejetski,

you get from Mastodon what you put into it.

tootytootwoo,

The amount of people on Mastodon who are like “ahh finally, nothing interesting to look at now that I left Twitter, I am at peace and can just scroll through pictures of someone’s dinner and obscure academic naval gazing :)” is so high

Tag365,
@Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

Wait, so the recent topics that occur suddenly on Twitter aren’t the normal things people talk about? So the hype on Twitter events are fake?

Prandom_returns,

They are. But they’re also influenced by who talks about it, how many comments, replies, likes it has. How many people click on it. Etc.

On mastodon is just how many people used the hashtag in a short period of time.

Puffymumpkins,

I think as Mastodon gets more popular, we will see more interesting tags pop up

MaxVoltage,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    Kovu,
    @Kovu@lemmy.world avatar

    tbh I really like mastodon but the userbase is incredibly boring

    aleph,
    @aleph@lemm.ee avatar

    I disagree, actually. Scrolling through the posts on my local instance, I see lots of interesting posts and witty commentary on current issues.

    It’s just that the trending hashtags don’t seem to reflect that at all.

    Heastes,

    I think the issue is that people nowadays have come to expect a certain degree of individualized feeds and discovery features.

    There is probably plenty of content on mastodon that would be of interest to any given user, but the discoverability is kind of lacking - especially if you are used to Twitter’s algorithmic feed.

    ttmrichter,
    @ttmrichter@lemmy.world avatar

    Search on hashtags. That alone gave me loads of useful and interesting content (to the point I had to make lists to separate them out into columns). Also look for community aggregation accounts. That’s a bot account that automatically boosts any post that mentions it. So if you’re interested in, say, progrock and there’s a @progrock community aggregation account, every time you post something on progressive rock, you mention @progrock and your post is seen by everybody who subscribes to @progrock.

    There have been a lot of creative ways people have come up with to make finding content easy. Start with the hashtags and you’ll find the aggregation accounts in no time.

    DudePluto,

    witty commentary on current issues

    Am I the only one who doesn’t enjoy the twitter-takes? Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with most of the takes. It’s just that it all feels like they’re trying to one-up each other with the cleverest gotcha and it makes me roll my eyes. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for a twitter/mastodon style community

    Kichae,

    Big, noisy rooms promote this kind of behaviours. It's also why comment chains on big Reddit subreddits degrade into memes, injokes, and other flavours of referential humour.

    It's all about being punchy and popular for Internet points, because otherwise no one is ever even going to read your words. They'll just be buried in the noise.

    Kotking,
    @Kotking@mastodon.social avatar

    @Kovu @aleph "You don't know how to cook em!" /jk But really it all depends on what you interested in and if people even use # ... do you know how many people joined due twitter fkups recently? Do you know how many use tweeter to mastodon conversion thingy to find old pals and use it as a message board instead you know.... SEARCHING VIA # ? so yeah it can be boring if people don't use # and only advanced users speak and search things. REally look at local feed and not only in eng! Translate it!

    survivorseason44,

    I used to feel that way on Mastodon myself! Being immersed in mundane content felt more like Facebook w/strangers (kind strangers, at least!) instead of what I’d want from a Twitter alternative (fluid breaking news discussions, humour, even “viral” content). What helped me is aggressively following hashtags and users who post stuff I care about, cuz the Mastodon experience relies heavily on follows compared to Twitter — now my feeds are much more active and focused on stuff I care about.

    It isn’t perfect though, and there’s much I miss about Twitter’s content/follow recommendation system. Like obviously we shouldn’t repeat the ultra-unethical aspects of that system (privileging “angertainment,” conflict, false information, hate content, etc). But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.

    ElectroVagrant,

    But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.

    Besides that last point (as that depends entirely on getting those in the space to begin with), I think the first two come down to the Mastodon culture needing to shift a little to be less…Hesitant? That may not be the best word for it, but some of the discoverability and openness of discussion may be related to this culture of hesitancy to connect & post from some who have faced the brunt of bullshit & harassment on corporate social media.

    There’s also the other side to this of an air of proactive rule/norm enforcement that itself makes folks uncertain of what’s okay to post or which way to post in some instances, which may be a misreading of the instance/space but sometimes it isn’t and though well-intended, doesn’t help a ton either.

    superflippy,

    There are a few of us out there being weird. But it is very tech-heavy right now, as was Twitter at first.

    PugJesus,
    @PugJesus@kbin.social avatar

    You must be the change you wish to see!

    aleph,
    @aleph@lemm.ee avatar

    I generally agree with this sentiment completely, but in this case the solution is beyond what I, as a single user, can achieve.

    I’m wondering whether the hashtag ranking system could be filtered and tweaked to make the topics more varied and less boring.

    AnonTwo,

    Based on all the comments though, the reason seems to be baked into Mastodon's design

    It seems to be a clash of what two groups of users want since a few seem to be happy with how Mastodon does it.

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