@rigrig The problem is that a few very vocal folk don't want search. Opt-in is a compromise.
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:20 JST 
Chris Trottier
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Arnie the DXman | HF4 (arnie_dxer@mastodon.radio)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:19 JST 
Arnie the DXman | HF4
@atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews so perhaps do a reverse: global search with an opt-out option for accounts or instances that don't want their toots be searchable?
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:33 JST
Chris Trottier
@arnie_dxer @rigrig @fediversenews That's been tried, and inevitably, those search engines get fediblocked.
In fact, every 3 months, someone announces a new search engine just like that.
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Arnie the DXman | HF4 (arnie_dxer@mastodon.radio)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:44 JST
Arnie the DXman | HF4
@atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews then I hope not all Masto admins are like that... ?
Eventually I can imagine the whole Fediverse splitting into two over the search issue. Like Christians split to Catholics & Orthodox, and later also to Protestants LOL
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:48 JST
Chris Trottier
@arnie_dxer @rigrig As I said, this is opt-in search like #Tootfinder is the closest we've come to a community consensus.
Certain folks don't like that it exists, but even those folks can't be bothered to Fediblock it.
What's the argument against #Tootfinder? That I might accidentally add the magic word to my bio and then someone evil will submit my full username? Quite unlikely.
As it stands, you can find quite a bit via #tootfinder
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stark@techhub:~$ █ (stark9837@techhub.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:56 JST 
stark@techhub:~$ █
@atomicpoet @arnie_dxer @rigrig
What is wrong with the normal full-text search currently implemented in #Mastodon? All of my #toots are opted-in for search engines?
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Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:29:59 JST
Chris Trottier
@Stark9837 @arnie_dxer @rigrig Only if you’ve sent those toots or previously interacted with them.
Which is not how I’d prefer search to happen.
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stark@techhub:~$ █ (stark9837@techhub.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:03 JST
stark@techhub:~$ █
@atomicpoet @arnie_dxer @rigrig
I understand, I got it wrong. In that case, I agree!
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Tattooed_Mummy (tattooed_mummy@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:18 JST 
Tattooed_Mummy
@arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews they get blocked because the way to opt out varies and they don't tell everyone, how could they, so we find out only after a while. Its a mess. I love not being searchable. It makes here a much nicer place than other social media. I now set my toots to delete after a week too, as an extra safety aspect. Being an opinionated woman online is rarely fun
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Tattooed_Mummy (tattooed_mummy@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:22 JST
Tattooed_Mummy
@arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews Ed Balls day exists in the UK because of vanity searches. It's a yearly reminder
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stark@techhub:~$ █ (stark9837@techhub.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:40 JST
stark@techhub:~$ █
@Tattooed_mummy @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews
Personally, I don't want my #toots to show up on #google searches or other #search engines, but if I post something relevant and someone wants to search it, they should be able to find it.
I love #3dprinting, and the only way to find content related to it is searching for the #hashtag, but not everyone uses it?
So should we normalize and enforce the usage of hashtags, or should we allow full-text-search?
If you don't use hashtags, you aren't part of searching? Actually, it is a good way to opt-in on a per-toot basis for searching.
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Netux (netux@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:48 JST 
Netux
@Stark9837 @Tattooed_mummy @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews
I think hashtags being opt in for searchability is a good way to handle things.Fediverse News repeated this. -
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Arnie the DXman | HF4 (arnie_dxer@mastodon.radio)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:30:55 JST
Arnie the DXman | HF4
@Stark9837 @Tattooed_mummy @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews come back to my 1st post. I wanted to be more specific in one of my searches and search by two hashtags at once. How does it end up so that this search engine cannot find anything, whereas querying these hashtags separately did come up with the post I wanted to find eventually in both cases? ?
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stark@techhub:~$ █ (stark9837@techhub.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:31:00 JST
stark@techhub:~$ █
@Netux @Tattooed_mummy @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews
Because you use #hashtags so that people can find your posts. Otherwise, there is no reason to use them. People follow and search hashtags. Otherwise, your posts are just for your followers.
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Tattooed_Mummy (tattooed_mummy@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:31:08 JST
Tattooed_Mummy
@Stark9837 @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews exactly, to me tags are the answer
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stark@techhub:~$ █ (stark9837@techhub.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:31:11 JST
stark@techhub:~$ █
@Tattooed_mummy @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews
All in favor, say "I"?
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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:31:31 JST 
Jupiter Rowland
Probably not only over the search issue, but generally over what the #Fediverse shall be.
One faction is the "old guard" that values Free Software, open-source, privacy, actual security, decentrality, federation, online services developed and run by the community etc. Many of them have been around before there was Mastodon, and Mastodon was launched in 2016. These people typically use the Fediverse through a desktop browser running on GNU/Linux.
They strongly oppose any central/centralistic structures in the Fediverse. They've got very good reasons to do so. The same goes for commercial, for-profit entities bringing proprietary, non-free products into the Fediverse.
The other faction makes up the vast majority of the #TwitterMigration newcomers. They don't care for any of the above. All they want is the Fediverse as a whole to be as easy to understand and to use as Twitter. Many only use the Fediverse through the official Mastodon app on an iPhone or a smartphone with manufacturer-issued Android.
They staunchly demand there be central structures if they make things easier for them. In fact, I guess many would love to see the whole Fediverse being reduced to only Mastodon and then Mastodon being turned into a centralised, monolithic silo so that nobody will ever have to know what instances are and choose one ever again.
Oh, and they usually absolutely despise tech-talk with a raging, burning passion. Even more so if it's about something they neither know nor understand (Free Software, open-source, Linux, Nextcloud, Raspberry Pi, anything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon, what happens behind their Mastodon app etc.).
Platform-wise, I can see a split happen between Mastodon and everything else. Mastodon doesn't care if it's compatible to anything else. It's increasingly becoming a walled garden within the Fediverse. I can actually see it either deliberately break existing ActivityPub standards or even fork ActivityPub or invent its own protocol if that's more convenient than sticking to vanilla ActivityPub.
The more difficult it becomes for other projects to federate with Mastodon, the more projects might decide it's no longer worth trying if it meant they'd have to overthrow basic principles of their own. They might even gradually introduce something more sophisticated than ActivityPub, e.g. Nomad, and then abandon ActivityPub, also to get out of reach of ActivityPub-introducing corporate silos such as Tumblr.Fediverse News repeated this. -
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feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:33:07 JST 
feld
The Fediverse is already split into two: fediblock users and the rest -
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Codex ☯️♈☮ (codexarcanum@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:33:42 JST 
Codex ☯️♈☮
It will certainly be interesting to see how it all plays out. I think your assessment of the camps is fairly accurate.
I guess I'd add that there are subsets of those groups whose specifics will probably drive a lot of these decisions though. Like the very vocal anti-search minority of the old guard, techie Twitter exiles like me who see value in protecting the fediverse and growing it, and the hustle-n-grind VCs who want to turn any online space into money for themselves.
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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:33:44 JST
Jupiter Rowland
@Codex ☯️♈☮ The "anti-search" minority is not anti-search per se.
But Fediverse-wide search is only technically possible with something central. And what these people do not want is any kind of central elements in the Fediverse.
Anything central, be it search or whatever, will allow one single person or one group of people to assume control and power over the whole Fediverse. Some say that Eugen Rochko already has too much power as he a) is the developer behind 99% of the Fediverse, b) can basically dictate in which way all other Fediverse projects develop, otherwise they stop being compatible with Mastodon, and c) runs the two biggest Mastodon instances.
It's even worse when some happy-go-lucky fellow who seems to neither know nor care about FLOSS launches a no-opt-in, not-even-opt-out central search engine for the Fediverse and makes it proprietary and closed-source. Not only could he take over the whole Fediverse, but you can't even check the inner workings of the search engine to see whether or not it's prepared for just that.
A central search engine could also be or become the property of a for-profit company. For one, this means that search results are being filled with ad spam by paying customers, and/or searches are being sold to Google or any other Big Data hoarder and broker. Besides, the for-profit that runs the search engine could be bought out by some Silicon Valley gigacorporation. And with it essentially the whole Fediverse because the whole Fediverse depends on it.
Allegedly "anti-search" people only appear to be anti-search because all attempts at creating a Fediverse-wide or even only Mastodon-wide search functionality were centralised. And because all widely-known attempts at creating something central were search crawlers.Fediverse News repeated this. -
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Ben Pate 🤘🏻 (benpate@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:34:57 JST 
Ben Pate 🤘🏻
@jupiter_rowland Yes. This will happen. There’s nothing stopping Google from indexing the Fediverse. And that’s a good thing. If it brings more people here, and if those people are still free to Federate however they want, then it’s something to celebrate.
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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:34:59 JST
Jupiter Rowland
@Ben Pate ? This isn't about Google. This isn't about search-indexing.
Imagine Tootfinder being non-opt-in, non-opt-out like the earlier centralised searches. Imagine Tootfinder firmly embedding itself into every last Fediverse project from Mastodon to Streams to the point of everyone and everything relying on it.
Now imagine Google buying out Tootfinder in a hostile takeover.
This would mean that Google ASSUMES FULL CONTROL over the entire Fediverse.
This is what we want to keep from happening. This is why we don't want anything central in the Fediverse.
We do NOT want the Fediverse to be controlled by any one central instance. Especially not by Google. Or Apple. Or Facebook. Or Amazon. Or Microsoft. Or any other corporation. Or some greedy VC vultures.
Or imagine Google assuming full and direct control over all e-mail. Not only Google Mail, but also Outlook Mail, Yahoo! Mail etc., including privacy-oriented paid providers in Europe, including every last little private personal mail server run by geeks in their homes.Fediverse News repeated this. -
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Ben Pate 🤘🏻 (benpate@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:35:19 JST
Ben Pate 🤘🏻
@jupiter_rowland Yes. Men in pinstripes suits are already working out how they can take over the Fediverse. I have no doubt. And they’ll be creative and sneaky about it, too. At the same time, search WILL happen somehow, because it’s good for the end users. So, I think the best defense is to manage HOW search happens, and to make *user-centric* standards for how external services can integrate with Fediverse apps
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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:35:21 JST
Jupiter Rowland
@Ben Pate ? Ideally, a Fediverse search engine would be decentralised and federated itself, and ideally, the code would be maintained by "the community" rather than one individual. But I guess that'd be hard to achieve.
Even then, such a search engine probably wouldn't be able to index the entire Fediverse right away and all the time. If you want tiny new instances of even the most obscure Fediverse project to be crawled right after they've come alive on someone's Raspberry Pi for the first time, you'd have to include support for such a search engine in the projects themselves. Instead of users or instances, the projects would have to opt in. -
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Netux (netux@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 13:37:21 JST
Netux
@Stark9837 @Tattooed_mummy @arnie_dxer @atomicpoet @rigrig @fediversenews
Exactly. I'm agreeing that it's a good solution, not that there's an additional opt in.
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