@jdp23 Unlisted replies are still present on the rendered HTML of the individual post -- but, I am now remembering, Mastodon v4 completely changed how they render posts, and thus also how they are indexed, so it is possible that in mastodon v4 those unlisted replies would be present if you click through the post but the content of the unlisted replies would not be _indexed_
so I'm pretty sure that in v4 I could not search google for a string of an unlisted reply to an indexed post
@darius thanks for the info ... that certainly seems like an improvement.
I can see why it behaves the way it does but given the whole "mastodon doesn't provide text search because it would make people more vulnerable to harassment" messaging ... even now it violates the principle of least surprise.