@mawr @Gargron
I get that for mastodon could not be used for overt data gathering. Until someone created a way to aggregate that data (probably creating a bunch of accounts on difference instances and scraping trending topics)
Providing active band wagons to jump on on the other hand definitely opens the feature up to wide scale manipulation and abuse.
Part 1
Mastodon Forking Discourse
Without some serious attention from admins to ensure each instance follows the same guide lines it can easily turn into a tool to manipulate and control discourse.
We have ample evidence of discourse manipulation on social media, so concerns about "trending topics" being abused are not unfounded. Wow.. I did not realize I was suddenly super passion about this. I've re-written this like 3 or 4 times to try squeezing under the character limit.
Mastodon Forking Discourse
For example there is now mountains on content written on the manipulation of facebook, twitter and even reddit to influence the 2016 election cycle.
Creating a feature that opens Mastodon up to the same level of discourse manipulation seems irresponsible especially without analyzing why said feature exists on other platforms and how it has been used and abused on similar platforms.
I'd hate to see Masto end up like Twitter.
