As an old person I am confirm that to me that is always pound sign, and that I do understand in context that it’s being used as a “hash tag.” That said, most old people like me don’t tend to intuitively read symbols to relate to phonetics. Obviously we can- but in emerald it isn’t my first thought. Growing up digital text communication was somewhat rare, and when it did occur was largely either alpha and or numeric characters. Often one line of lcd making smileys and such hit or miss. We tended to use code and our own abbreviations for things instead. So either way I’d agree that most old farts wouldn’t read it as a double entendre unless we put some thought in it or were in a “that’s what she said” kind of mood.
I refer to it as pound but I wouldn't have put it together with metoo instead I would have only read it as Women's movement against sexual harassment, metoo. When using the # symbol in an actual sentence I only read it as "number" since it's the number sign. ex. What is your phone #?
But the # is used in social media, where most people see it as hash-tag, not pound. That's like me saying holy shit and people saying "you realize that means a blessed turd, right?"
Tomato Tomartini.