Katerina MarchánNov 4, 2022

reasons mastodon's "viral dampening effect" is a good thing:

👉🏻 no "main character of the day"
👉🏻 no free text searching for people to get angry at (and harrass)
👉🏻 doomscrolling is *actually bad for you* and not a thing we should be trying to replicate
👉🏻 birdsite's virality is heavily driven by actual paid advertising and bots. You think that "Explore" tab gets its content organically? really? That's not making connections between people, it's about driving sales.

Mastodon is not, and should not be, a 1:1 replacement for Twitter. But it *can* be a new place for you to make valuable connections with other human beings. #twitter #twittermigration

Show threadaRubesNov 4, 2022
@zkat as to the 2nd point, technically not true. Many instances do include text searches, it's just a hassle to deploy
Show threadKaterina MarchánNov 4, 2022
@aRubes TIL. Does that work across the entire fediverse, though? Can I find someone to yell at 5 instances over who no one I follow follows?
Show threadaRubesNov 4, 2022
@zkat I don't think so. I think the limit is even only people that you follow bit I'm not sure
Show threadKaterina MarchánNov 4, 2022
@aRubes yeah what I'm talking about is people completely disconnected from me word searching and coming at me
Show threadaRubes
@zkat I wasn't a follower when I searched
Nov 4, 2022 at 9:06pmWeb
Show threadKaterina MarchánNov 4, 2022
@aRubes interesting. TIL
Show threadaRubesNov 4, 2022
@zkat but two people that I follow are following you, and they're both from my instance
Show threadJamie GaskinsNov 4, 2022
@zkat @aRubes Yeah, it’s just toots the instance you’re on knows about. So you’re effectively searching the federated timeline.
Show threadJamie GaskinsNov 6, 2022

@zkat @aRubes I stand corrected on what it searches. I just installed Elasticsearch on my server and discovered it doesn't search the federated timeline, it's scoped to the person searching and only shows posts they created or are somehow connected to (mentioned, liked/faved, boosted, bookmarked, or voted in a poll on).

I kept thinking search was broken, but it's working exactly as intended.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/optional/elasticsearch/ https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/58fc889c6fe697da4f880cb43e75d97d3a604d79/app/models/status.rb#L138-L158