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I think Fediverse search would be a good thing

I think that fundamentally that argument was ended when the WebIndex was created, and living in a post-WebIndex world basically means that searchability is the way that people approach problems and questions. I like the ability to find old thoughts and I like the ability to find old things. And I think that people who dislike it should have the tools to disable it (robots.txt, nobot, and post-autodeletion). But it would be real nice to remember something from four years ago and search it out of the memory hole.

I think about this in context of like, email. If an inbox decided "I will publish every email sent to me" I think that like, that would be fine. However, if a mail relay did that I would be suspicious as hell.

But I think that most Fediverse accounts act more like inboxes than relays. Obviously, if someone were to setup that email inbox, I would definitely think harder about sending email to it than to my friends. And I think that that change is probably the core of the tension where people worry about the fediverse.

I don't understand the people who dislike a generic search tools - and their arguments have never persuaded me - I don't know what I'm missing.

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in reply to silverwizard

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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@silverwizard The main case against Fediverse-wide search is the emerging practice of name-searching Twitter-wide. This is objectively bad and anything adding friction to search is likely to reduce the likelihood of this behavior on the Fediverse.
@silverwizard
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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Yeah, I see the problems - but workarounds are too easy IMO to make potential abuses the main resistence point, anyone with a few hundred bucks can do the bad thing
in reply to silverwizard

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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@silverwizard I'm not sure if you realize how insignificant the "anyone with a few hundreds bucks" subset of "all users" is. What allowed the practice to emerge was the free and immediate access to network-wide search even without a registered account!
@silverwizard
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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I acknowledge the limitations of that group, it's definitely a mass actor vs a select group, and builds the KiwiFarms problem, not a massive problem

That is, of course, assuming that the next time it happens that the person maintaining the search doesn't run their own instance and just, endures, unlikely last time where they were trying to use a public instance and were battered around until they relented

Unknown parent

silverwizard
silverwizard
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I think the email relay point is the counter argument to that point
in reply to silverwizard

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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@silverwizard Oh, I just stumbled on another emergent behavior contributing to the argument against Fediverse-wide search: the need to use elaborate and varied paraphrases when talking about popular topics (like "Beetkoin" or "Elmo") to avoid being harassed by either bots or stans. These also defeat user-defined filters for the wrong reasons.
@silverwizard
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

silverwizard
silverwizard
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That's definitely valid

I feel like defederation is the solution to that though - unless, of course, Mastodon.social existed

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