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Mastodon 4.2 released, with (opt-in) search, and UX improvements
(blog.joinmastodon.org)
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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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This is what I don't understand: When people mark a post as public and discoverable, meaning Google and Bing and such can already find and index it, why would one need to opt-in to making it available via Mastodon search? Isn't that what Unlisted is already for?
@woelkchen @andypiper Consider it a compromise, given how many people were dead set against *any* search.
I'm not on Mastodon, why were people against search?
@SorteKanin Some people object to any feature they have seen be abused on Twitter, whether or not it also has legitimate uses. And as it turns out almost any feature *can* be used to harass. If you want to just have your own little space, search allows bad guys to find you. It of course allows good guys to find you too. Some still do not think that's a worthwhile tradeoff (I don't agree, and I think it's futile, and I support search, btw.)
Probably because they are illiterate about very basic concepts on the internet.
But public posts are already searchable because they are public. That's what all public posts on the internet are. They are visible to Google and Bing. Defaulting to not make public posts searchable from within Mastodon just drives people to proprietary search engines.
@woelkchen I didn't say it was logical, but that doesn't stop a lot of people from objecting.
And I agree it just drives people elsewhere.
Google and Bing's crawlers can find and index Unlisted posts just as easily as any other.
Just because there are 3rd-party search engines that don't respect people's privacy, doesn't mean that a 1st party search engine should follow their example.
Which privacy when it comes to posts explicitly tagged as public?
You're conflating tagging a post as public so that it is publicly accessible as being the same thing as consenting to being indexed in a search engine.
And why wouldn't this be the same thing? Public content is public content. 3rd party services can already access the posts.
The lack of an ability to prevent someone from doing something to you, without compromises on your part, is not the same thing as being okay with it being done to you.
3rd party services can access the posts, because the authors marked them as publicly accessible.
Those same 3rd party services can also index the posts in a search engine, but this is only because there is no feasible technological barrier to prevent them from doing so. If such an imaginary technology did exist, it would have been deployed already.
In the mean time, we can only count on a social solution, which is to merely signal our objections to search engine indexing, in the hope that maybe a law could be drafted that uses that as precedent to make indexing without consent illegal.
Here's a question for you. Do you think it's okay for Google or whoever to install invisible cameras everywhere in public spaces, that were explicitly for the purpose of collecting data to develop a facial recognition model to search people without their consent? Public space is public space ...
It's been awhile since I made a new account on a Mastodon instance, but is search engine indexing enabled by default? If it isn't, then that would probably be part of why this is being made opt-in for Mastodon search, as there's been a vocal portion of folks on Mastodon opposed to search across the board.
Even if search engine indexing was enabled by default, y'know those vocal folks probably disable it ASAP and would be making a fuss if this update went & enabled Mastodon search by default. Which, well, why post publicly at all if the concern's related to privacy or not being bothered by internet randos, but 🤷♀️
Well, those can tag their posts as Unlisted.
Is it opt-out for performance reasons? If it was opt-in, maybe large instances will crumble.
Anyway, this is a wild guess.
You need to opt-in for your posts to show up in the new full-text search.
I already wrote that. And what's the point of tagging a post as public and then not being able to find it on Mastodon's search? Public posts are indexable by Google and such already, no matter if the search opt-in checkbox was ticked or not.
This is opting in to Mastodon's search, not third party search engines.
Yes, that's what I wrote. And my question is what the point is when all public posts are indexed by Google anyway.
You can opt-out of being indexed on search engines.