Comment on Mastodon 4.2 released, with (opt-in) search, and UX improvements

woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• stad@m.stad.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  @woelkchen @andypiper Consider it a compromise, given how many people were dead set against *any* search.

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  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m not on Mastodon, why were people against search?

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    • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m not on Mastodon, why were people against search?

      Probably because they are illiterate about very basic concepts on the internet.

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  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Consider it a compromise, given how many people were dead set against any search.

    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.

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    • stad@m.stad.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      @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.

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• petunia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Which privacy when it comes to posts explicitly tagged as public?

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    • petunia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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      • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And why wouldn’t this be the same thing? Public content I public content. 3rd party services can already access the posts.

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• Jackthelad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You need to opt-in for your posts to show up in the new full-text search.

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  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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• wabalabadubdub@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is it opt-out for performance reasons? If it was opt-in, maybe large instances will crumble.

  Anyway, this is a wild guess.

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• asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is opting in to Mastodon’s search, not third party search engines.

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  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Jackthelad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You can opt-out of being indexed on search engines.

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• ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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 🤷‍♀️

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  • woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    as there’s been a vocal portion of folks on Mastodon opposed to search across the board.

    Well, those can tag their posts as Unlisted.

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