Meta‘s newly rolled out hashless tags have already been seized by trolls as the perfect trolling opportunity… and it’s fairly easy to see why.
The new ‘topic tags’ are essentially like Twitter’s hashtags, only minus the hashes and can contain spaces, making them simply read like usual phrases rather than obvious tags.
This has ermmmm… inspired some pretty silly trolling as its most base level. It’s easy enough to explain.
Say, I create a topic tag that simply reads ‘show more’ (like I just did in the screenshot above). Then, you write out a post with a lot of text, maybe something enthralling or intriguing, maybe a story that cuts off at a crucial point. Stick that ‘show more’ topic tag at the end (or middle), prompting someone to click it.
They take the bait, expecting to read the full story, and instead – oh d’oh – they’ve been directed to that tag’s page. Think of it a bit like rick rolling.
Got to admit, when I read this at first, it got me. Some users are reporting that they’ve fallen for it multiple times (which is fair, considering it mimics UI we’re used to experiencing elsewhere, especially on platforms like Facebook and X).
But, I predict it’ll probably get old pretty fast.
Have you fallen for this form of trolling on Threads yet? Are you inspired to give it a try yourself? Let me know in the comments.
