> because those symbols service important UX functions As I read the post, I was thinking that #tags and @mentions are primarily about input, not reading. It's

> because those symbols service important UX functions As I read the post, I was thinking that #tags and @mentions are primarily about input, not reading. It's easier to just whack some #random #tags in your #sentences than to switch to a separate tag list input. Similarly, highlighting some text in order to apply the "mention" brush like we might with bold or italics would be strictly worse.