My guess is to leave open the possibility of adding HashTag support within the app. YouTube hash HashTags that allow you to jump between channels… I could see something like that working.
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A hashtag fits more for communities than an exclamation mark.
I think it has more to do with the federated nature of the platform. If you are ingesting content from Mastodon for example, # is a hashtag in a post, and you can tag someone with their username with the @ symbol.
Edit: you can tag people here with @ too - such as @knova@[email protected]
So that leaves a new symbol for community linking
A hashtag for community seems much better than an exclamation mark.
You already said that
But you didn’t say why Lemmy does not use hashtags for communities.
I explained that hashtags use the pound symbol already, and usernames use the @ symbol. Communities needed their own symbol.
hashtags are for hashtags
