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   Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:39:17 JST Evan Prodromou

   This is really interesting! I know I say that a lot, but in this case it's very true. It seems like a lot of people are OK with developers building search engines that meet current community standards.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:44:44 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     What those community standards are is interesting.

     I think at least in part there's a strong commitment to privacy on the fediverse.

     In particular, there is an aversion to being aggregated, collated, sorted and classified.

     Others engaging with you not based on knowing who you are, or participation in conversation, but because they found you on list somewhere.

     The classic example I've seen in discussion here is trolls using search terms to find and harass trans people.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:46:59 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Another norm is defaults. That is, the default configuration should favour community norms, not the needs of the searcher.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:47:58 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Another is ephemerality. That the past is the past; we should let things disappear with time.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:50:38 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     There's another one, which might be best characterized as, we said no search, so no fucking search, no matter what, ever.

     Like, the voice of the community has spoken, and anyone who tries to reopen the question is being disrespectful of that community.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:57:42 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Anyways, I'm a qualified yes.

     When I originally designed the permission system in ActivityPub, I expected to have activities addressed to the Public be available for typical Web use: reading and linking.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 02:59:51 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     I also think republication should be based on licensing, like Creative Commons licenses. Not very well supported now on the fediverse, unfortunately.

     People seem to forget who have come to the fediverse from Twitter is that those platforms have republication terms built into their terms of use. Not the case here!

     We have 30 years of weird precedent in Web search, like Google, that's found an uneasy and dynamic balance that seems to appease all sides.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:06:50 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Anyway, I think there is a really positive and human-centered concept of search in the fediverse.

     I think that we actually have to implement those concepts in order to make them the norm.

     If we don't, other ideas of how search will work will be implemented by people who don't, by definition, follow community norms here.

     I think it's a lot easier to guide the practices of later entrants if there are working examples of correct behaviour.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:10:52 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Oh, one last thing!

     Search is a powerful counterbalance to centralisation.

     Being able to use N many different search engines to find references to a hashtag means you don't have to default to a single supernode's use of that hashtag.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:23:50 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     This is not an exhaustive nor a very detailed list of norms, by the way.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:33:47 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Bathsheba Blue

     @inklings

     My polls are neither binding resolutions nor scientific instruments.

     I do polls almost every day, on a lot of topics. I do it because I'm interested in people's thoughts and opinions. I try to write them clearly and succinctly, but that's basically to minimise having to clarify over and over.

     "Most people" here means "most people who responded".

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     Bathsheba Blue (inklings@mastodon.world)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:33:49 JST Bathsheba Blue

     in reply to

     @evan
     You do know that this is in no way a representative sample or valid survey right?
     Most normal users probably don’t understand what “according to current standards” (limited) means.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:40:38 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Will 🌹🏴

     @datatitian if you think that, you should definitely try implementing it.

   • Embed this notice
     Will 🌹🏴 (datatitian@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 03:40:39 JST Will 🌹🏴

     in reply to

     @evan speaking of decentralization, I think a federated search, where each instance keeps its own index of its own content and the searcher can request results from many instances, could easily address my concerns about search and probably most others concerns, too

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 05:04:37 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Will 🌹🏴

     @datatitian good luck!

   • Embed this notice
     Will 🌹🏴 (datatitian@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 05:04:38 JST Will 🌹🏴

     in reply to

     @evan no man, that's the attitude that's so frustrating about the previous search imolementors. Building something that conforms to community norms requires communication*before* you build.

     We should be telling people, "if you think that, then spread the idea around and see what others think. See if you can find a group of people to help guide you"

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 05:24:08 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Will 🌹🏴

     @datatitian I'd highly recommend doing some research on federated search before you start.

     It's extremely difficult to implement, and even if you do very well, performance is terrible and search results are bad.

   • Embed this notice
     mconnor (mconnor@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 16-Jan-2023 12:07:22 JST mconnor

     in reply to

     @evan I think as long as the platform makes it possible to build bad tools, they’re going to get built. I’m still pretty new here, but I think we need to figure out how to evolve the platform so we aren’t dependent on good intentions.