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Top-level
 Almost every time I write about Mastodon’s awful search capabilities, someone comes out of the woodwork to say that Mastodon is better without search. What’s funny is that so many of these anti-search folks are *not* using Mastodon, and are therefore benefiting from better search services on their preferred Fediverse platforms. 15 comments
I’m also convinced that “anti-search” is an awful band-aid solution to what really ails Mastodon: virality takes a backseat to community safety. Comment control should be a thing. Local-only posting should be a thing. Blacklisting and whitelisting options for regular users should be a thing. Instead, search and social discovery are kneecapped. That's a good point. Offhand and broadly: LIMITING your reach should be the opt-in, and if you disagree, I think you're using this place wrong. If you want group privacy than don't use something **literally designed for** the opposite of that. This ends up looking a lot like security through obscurity. Search can absolutely be implemented adversarially, which will bypass any sort of controls/opt-in functionality and not supporting it natively absolutely means that’s going to happen sooner and the tools will work better. @atomicpoet No idea what drives anti search. I’ve added it. Oddly enough we’re able to have much better mod tools and proactively catch things with search. In many ways fediverse platforms could be lighter and more easily distributed based on search vs db/redis/streaming and web workers  @atomicpoet We need search; I am fine with it being opt in if that is what it takes to overcome objections. People who create for a living or write to spread a message *want* their posts to be found.  @atomicpoet right? I want an algorithmic feed that shows me everything my follows are interacting with. I want to know what words are trending in my circle of the fediverse. I just also want douchenozzles who send rape threats and transphobic insults to be sent a kick in the balls over standard TCP/IP. I liked the hellsite, other than its ownership and its lack of hackability to fix its flaws. My worry though is what person will suffer moderating such a place. @atomicpoet In search of the missing Mastodon? The trial by fire story that I believe will help the world more than Twitter ever did. #Search #Mastodon #Clients  @atomicpoet I don't get the privacy argument with search. You're posting in the public domain where every other search engine in the universe can crawl and index your posts anyway. I only use Mastodon for social (apart from occasionally encouraging people to leave corporate control anti-Social ) I get trash results from band search in full text like birdsite. 500 false positives for 5 hits. I get great results from #mastodon #hashtags like 15relevant results 2 false positives in 17 results. It's not black and white. Sometimes hashtags do jobs that full text utterly fails at. @atomicpoet I'm using Mastodon, and I think the existing search capabilities are fine and do not wish for them to be extended. A lot if people don't want more searching here — that's why it is the way it is. Those other tools you mentioned should exist as well, mind. Why not have all the tools fir safety at hand? @atomicpoet I don't understand why Mastodon's lack of search bothers you when you are using these other services as well, or why this question keeps coming up over and over again. Out of genuine curiosity, why is it an issue for you that some people on some #Fediverse services you don't have do use don't want centralized, full-text search? |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet yeah, the current system needs to be improved even if restrictions on searchable contents and posts remain the same. The fact that I often can't find _my own toots_ is ridiculous.