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Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across mul

Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across multiple hashtags which they didn't provide. For example, posts that contain both #jenniferlawrence and #hoodedeyes would be what you are looking for, and if you interacted with enough posts containing both of those tags you would end up seeing the content you want, you just can't do it directly by navigating to those hashtag pages individually. I used to provide this in my free hashtag suggestion app (which I kept online because it was, IMO, the best at what it did and still gets 500k hits a month). The app allows users to iteratively navigate the hashtag graph to a final set of tightly related tags. Anyway, during this refinement process users would see a grid of post thumbnails where the posts contain the desired hashtags. Facebook eventually tightened access to IGs API and blocked my ability to provide this thumbnail grid, but the rest of the app is still standing

kixiQu 4y ago
> For example, posts that contain both #jenniferlawrence and #hoodedeyes would be what you are looking for I mean, not to overwork it, but in this example, this isn't accurate: I just want pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, not the much smaller slice of content where the poster had her particular eye shape in mind. Also, I don't want to only "end up seeing" pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in my main feed, I want to be able to go find them when I want them. Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding, and that is why I feel so strongly that it is trash. (We could also talk about how similar phenomena manifested elsewhere: the #goth tag on Tumblr in my Tumblr days was unusable because of the quantity of non-goths looking at a lowkey photo and deciding that was the best descriptor – so the actual #goth content was found in .... #gothgoth. And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem)
- errantmind 4y ago
  Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). You have to outrun the noise, as you described in your #gothgothgoth example
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    >Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. this, and what you said earlier >Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across multiple hashtags which they didn't provide. forgive my naivete but I wonder exactly what could possibly have been good about their tag system if it didn't help users narrow down to just the content they wanted?
    - errantmind 4y ago
      You ever just put a show on or pick up a book spontaneously, without really having a particular show or book in mind before you started? This is kind of like that, call it 'directed spontaneity'. You open the app to see interesting stuff, but you don't know what exactly that might be in advance. The app learns some basic stuff about you using your interactions on content then tries to guess. You either like the stuff the app shows you or you don't. The hashtag system was very good at filtering content to what you generally like in your feed and the Explore view, but it wasn't set up for you to fully guide your own experience in search of very particular content using individual hashtags.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    > Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery We agree: > Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding So as the user-directed ontology component of the IG ecosystem, it's trash, and I will die mad about it. > every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN) I want to distinguish my complaint here from a gatekeeper's lament. This isn't about, say, nu-goth showing up and coming to eat the fashion scene, as Tumblr did indeed instigate. I'm talking about pictures being tagged with "goth" that no one looking for "goth" content would consider relevant (a closeup of coral red lipstick, say), but which would show up as "top #goth posts" because they were highly engaged with in the other contexts people saw them. (To a lesser extent, also Etsy spam in #gothgoth, but this is more what you're talking about)
- pjc50 4y ago
  > And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem Excellently put. To me, it seems that the problem is that tagging is adversarial in any system where spamming can be rewarded.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    Yeah – I'm not even sure we can call it adversarial where there seems to be no signal for relevancy. I'm sure there are "good" reasons for not having one (where by "good" I mean "profitable") but oof it sucks (esp. relative to the much simpler Web2.0 organization of e.g. Reddit)

kixiQu 4y ago

> For example, posts that contain both #jenniferlawrence and #hoodedeyes would be what you are looking for I mean, not to overwork it, but in this example, this isn't accurate: I just want pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, not the much smaller slice of content where the poster had her particular eye shape in mind. Also, I don't want to only "end up seeing" pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in my main feed, I want to be able to go find them when I want them. Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding, and that is why I feel so strongly that it is trash. (We could also talk about how similar phenomena manifested elsewhere: the #goth tag on Tumblr in my Tumblr days was unusable because of the quantity of non-goths looking at a lowkey photo and deciding that was the best descriptor – so the actual #goth content was found in .... #gothgoth. And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem)

errantmind 4y ago
Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. To your second point, every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN). You have to outrun the noise, as you described in your #gothgothgoth example
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery to the level you are describing. this, and what you said earlier >Isolated hashtags on IG were often not useful for finding specific content. To find what you want you'd need an interface to a page that showed posts across multiple hashtags which they didn't provide. forgive my naivete but I wonder exactly what could possibly have been good about their tag system if it didn't help users narrow down to just the content they wanted?
  - errantmind 4y ago
    You ever just put a show on or pick up a book spontaneously, without really having a particular show or book in mind before you started? This is kind of like that, call it 'directed spontaneity'. You open the app to see interesting stuff, but you don't know what exactly that might be in advance. The app learns some basic stuff about you using your interactions on content then tries to guess. You either like the stuff the app shows you or you don't. The hashtag system was very good at filtering content to what you generally like in your feed and the Explore view, but it wasn't set up for you to fully guide your own experience in search of very particular content using individual hashtags.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  > Right, but it was never meant to specialize in user-directed filtering and discovery We agree: > Instagram's ontology is designed to not make this possible, because everything about it is meant to facilitate tube-feeding So as the user-directed ontology component of the IG ecosystem, it's trash, and I will die mad about it. > every social context that gets 'cool' eventually gets LCDed into mediocrity (even HN) I want to distinguish my complaint here from a gatekeeper's lament. This isn't about, say, nu-goth showing up and coming to eat the fashion scene, as Tumblr did indeed instigate. I'm talking about pictures being tagged with "goth" that no one looking for "goth" content would consider relevant (a closeup of coral red lipstick, say), but which would show up as "top #goth posts" because they were highly engaged with in the other contexts people saw them. (To a lesser extent, also Etsy spam in #gothgoth, but this is more what you're talking about)
pjc50 4y ago
> And if you're wondering if this was discovered and subsequently chased out to #gothgothgoth, You Have Understood The Problem Excellently put. To me, it seems that the problem is that tagging is adversarial in any system where spamming can be rewarded.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  Yeah – I'm not even sure we can call it adversarial where there seems to be no signal for relevancy. I'm sure there are "good" reasons for not having one (where by "good" I mean "profitable") but oof it sucks (esp. relative to the much simpler Web2.0 organization of e.g. Reddit)