Mastodawn

@conradhackett to the extent that hashtags are effective in connecting marginalized communities, bad actors will already be able to exploit them to identify targets. Without effective discovery, most new users are unable to find conversations and people to follow that align with their specific interests and aren’t staying active and building the platform. This latter issue should be considered more important if this is to form a new gathering place for ex twitter folks

@thornbill9 @conradhackett I don't understand why the networks of communication can't grow over time without search. Eventually you grow a network that you have complex relationships with and discover new people and content through that network sharing it with you. Search might make that faster but if it's also a source of harm then I'd rather stick with getting to know people and figuring out ways to connect/discover outside of leveraging a large central index.

@danwchan @conradhackett A platform with and without rapid discovery serve different goals. What I would like to rebuild is twofold: ability to quickly connect with experts *outside of my social graph* and to find the rare people around the world who share my niche interests. The irony is that the proposed compromise, hashtags, could just as easily attract abusers to the effect they work. Meanwhile a lot of people won’t put effort to grow roots here if they don’t find those people to begin with

@danwchan @conradhackett It’s the difference between Facebook and Twitter. I’m less interested in just meeting the people who happen to live on my digital block (same server or shared connection). I want to leverage the internet’s scale to learn from an expert or a person with direct experience on a rare disease or a natural disaster halfway across the world. And I want to ensure that new users quickly find a reason to stay because the more users, the more of them will be those voices

@thornbill9 I understand a little better what you are thinking now. Did you have a lot of valuable interaction from folks outside your followers on Twitter? I did not so I'm unsure of what that experience is like. Did you also provide valuable interaction via search? My impression is that twitter's algorithm may have served some folk needs over others and of course at the cost of requiring that users submit to their terms and surveillance.

@danwchan I was never a big account focused on broadcast. I’m focused on curation. The algorithm of course helps with discovery - and some have theorized a solution of offering users the chance to choose their algos but for me it’s about the ability to, if I want to better understand a civil war in Ethiopia or an earthquake in NZ be able to immediately find first hand accounts from citizens and journalists on the ground. That’s unparalleled in human history. No gatekeepers

@danwchan to give another example, during COVID there were dominant neoliberal narratives perpetuated by authorities that dominated traditional broadcast media from print to cable. The only place I could learn from fellow social democratic perspectives and access the academic community which uncovered uncomfortable truths about long COVID was on twitter. But this doesn’t mean that community wasn’t part of the experience. Nba twitter, black twitter and election twitter were examples of that

@thornbill9 yes i just finished reading an article by @ct_bergstrom now which seems to elaborate on the value of Twitter during the 2020-2021 period of the pandemic.

They shared a link to it here https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom/109371298889565968

Carl T. Bergstrom (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image I wrote a piece for the New York Times about how scientists used Twitter during the Covid pandemic and about what comes next. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/opinion/pandemic-twitter.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

FediScience.org

@danwchan @ct_bergstrom I think this tweet said it best. The key aspect to twitter is not the community you build with your followers but the ones you have access to listen to and learn from even if you never speak

@thornbill9
I see there is value from the wide-reaching network that T may represent (who gets access to this network is an eternal struggle), but i'm still failing to understand how adding a central search to mastodon would somehow begin a process to build that network from the fedi.

The way i see it, T had a large userbase because more users and digital interactions are valuable to the advertisers, this aligned with many users finding value in a large central network too.

@thornbill9 On fedi the network is distributed so instances have to consent to search if it's built, thus I see the barrier to a wide reaching network as dependant on the ability to gather consent for opt-in search *first* rather than advocating for feature addition. This will ensure the communities that instances represent understand and consent to having their toots indexed and why this may be important. If you are advocating for such a network here consider this perspective.

@thornbill9 It's still possible to have insights from a wide range of instances accross fedi (which may be in distant localities and thus aggregate reports and sentiments from those places as you desire) if you add them to your social graph. But, this takes time which as you rightly point out is not always something a user wants to spend. So perhaps you are beginning to define a need where a business or other organisation could provide a service.

@danwchan one of my biggest priorities is people (who like me are interested in a discussion group news engine hybrid) building their original social graph and becoming active daily users. To overcome both the technical and social challenges you raise, I would suggest the possibility that people could opt in between a more open and protected experience from the beginning in a form of sorting hat which could help them choose an instance (or network of instances) which matches their use case

@thornbill9 If I stumble into folks who fit that bill I will make sure to let them know of you. I think an instance chooser / improving resources that help people find the right community is important. The resources I know of don't consider some of the intentions we've discussed here, but that's also because not all instances communicate the intent of their communities. Sorting hat is a good concept recognising that there is still an opportunity to move instances once folks join.

@thornbill9 @conradhackett we've all watched a few million new users arrive this week. They seem to be getting along fine, making friends and meeting people. Apart from the complaints from a bunch of people who want to replicate every aspect of Twitter, what has given you the idea new users are struggling with discovery for, like, more than 10 minutes after signing up?

Thornbill9 Nov 20, 2022

@jimbob @conradhackett this is called a selection problem. You’re finding the people who settled in and are trying to make the most of the platform rather than all the people who saw how much work that entailed and said no thanks. This is a conversation between some of the brightest minds in progressive journalism who have good faith openness to making most of this opportunity and found it burdensome. Now imagine the hundreds of thousands of regular folks doing same

@thornbill9 @conradhackett quite excited to be on a platform that journalists struggle to use, but that's probably just me.

Thornbill9 Nov 20, 2022

@jimbob @conradhackett yeah I think as I’ve commented to many original mastodoners what I’ve loved about twitter is its ability to curate the types of journalists who offer deep reported insights rather than tribalistic hype of beltway conventional wisdom and then find communities of likeminded folks who follow them. If you believe all journalists are equally bad, then you sound like a fascist

@thornbill9 @conradhackett journalists as a class aren't bad, but the echo-chamber/personality cult that can form around them can be very destructive on social media. If journalists have deep insights, then they should probably go publish it in the broadcast channels they are privileged enough to have available to them. If they want to actually be part of a community, as human beings, on an equal footing, then maybe they should try to understand that community.

Thornbill9 Nov 20, 2022

@jimbob @conradhackett two issues: not all journalists have access to the biggest loudspeakers (oped pages of prestige newspapers, cable news spots) and under 40 crowd consume most of news from social media. The obsession with the large account follower relationship that I see on here (and in Elmo’s misguided $8/month blue check for hire) significantly misunderstands the value proposition for the follower. I want curated, diverse news and opinion from experts to discuss with readership

@conradhackett @thornbill9

Matt Wilcox Nov 20, 2022

Conversely, it hasn’t been a problem to find folk you want to follow here for years. It was doing fine without full text search. The experiment ran here, worked here. I see no reason why it is now an issue. It’s different here and we don’t want some of the Twitter mindset, enabled by Twitter design choices.

Ian Fogg Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett I'd like to see a setting for users to opt-in to free text search, as a default for all their posts, but also selectable for an individual post. This would protect the vulnerable while offering more power & flexibility for others

monkeyes2 Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett just provide an opt out, like the old phone unlisted number. so people who do not want to be searched can abstain.. or even better an opt in.

Thorsten Kurz Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett

The #spirit in which this place was created doesn't seem to encourage optimizing the harvesting, processing, and digestion of #information.

In that sense, I appreciate the opt-in nature of #hashtags.

#NonLocal #search on the other hand, strikes me as more of a constraint of the #infrastructure, which would be probably overloaded by the continuous exchange of data from search traffic (and maintaining of local and remote indices).

#NonLocalSearch

Dan Harper Nov 19, 2022

@tkurz @conradhackett As I understand it, implementing search across the entire Fediverse is analogous to implementing search across all email providers; it may be technically possible, but ... see Thorsten Kurz's reply.

I would also add, as a long-time user of open source software, that it's wise to get to know open source software well before asking for improvements. When I first started using GIMP, my attitude was, "It's not Photoshop! Blah!" But once I learned GIMP I no longer felt that way

C. E. M. Henderson Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett @TedUnderwood Hell no. Lack of text search is one of the best things about this place vs twitter.

Katherine ☘️Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett It would be nice to add a lot of these features while improving them for safety and security at the same time in order to allow down opportunities for harassment

Thrane Nov 20, 2022

@cupcakezealot @conradhackett I keep seeing people mentioning search opening for #harassment, but i dont see how it radically changes anything? People can still find eachother, their profiles, and instances - if you want for harass someone you easily still can, no?

Joe Effex Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett Hi Conrad. Yes, I think— give accounts control to set parameters for how they appear or not in search. ✌️

Ted Underwood Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett I do think making search opt-in would neutralize most arguments against this

Ted Underwood Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett I can see the other side of the question though. Mastodon is respectful because interaction with ppl you follow / on your instance tends to be respectful, and frankly it’s hard to find posts by ppl outside those circles here. To the extent that we provide #search or other #discovery , we permit a wider range of interaction, and that could change the tone even if opt-in. I think I still vote yes, but I see the case against.

Daniel Howard 🌻Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett ... wouldn't Google do this?

Lee 🌏Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett
- Add a "make searchable" button for Toots

Del

Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett improve search and we make SEO nonsense a thing again. Marketing teams and advertising/pay-to-win gets a foothold.

@conradhackett Thank you for this survey. There was briefly the possibility of a search on Mastodon #fulltextsearch (https://fedsearch.io). The disscussion about the discontinuation of this search possibility (https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/109311187050279476) has deterred me very much. Since the argumentation against a search was not based on facts and/or, for me completely intransparent was.

FedSearch - Federated network search engine

Search for the Mastodon network

@conradhackett In any case, I have not yet seen a convincing presentation that would make the argument against a search clear and understandable. As a scientist, I would clearly state that: "The ability to #search hashtags is no substitute for the ability to #fulltext search." Without an exploratory search based on the texts published here, the utility for #ScienceMastodon, #AcademicMastodon is limited.

GirtBySea Nov 19, 2022

@GoetzSchuck @conradhackett
Here's a fact, or what looks like one to me:
In preferences users can toggle
visibility to search engine indexing
On or off
at their discretion.
Whether their hashed ot @t'd strings are still discoverable with that flag off
I dunno.
I imagine server admins have similar preference control to implement policy over the instance.
Sounds like two cultures, one purely social, one more semantic.
#MarshallMcCluhan would have a field day.
The length of this thread says something.

@GirtBySea @conradhackett According to https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13207, it is not entirely clear to me what this opt does. In any case, I think it's a great idea if people have extensive freedom of choice about indexing.

"Opt-out of search engine indexing" considered harmful · Issue #13207 · mastodon/mastodon

Sorry for the provocative title. :~) Expected behaviour When I select "opt-out of search engine indexing" then no search engine (including other Mastodon instances) should be able to index my toots...

GitHub

Chris Waigl 📡🌲🔥🏳️‍🌈Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett Search works well enough for me. I don't need something that would find every result across the network given that I don't have the capacity to interact with everr result across the network.

I'm also ok with an ephemeral medium.

@conradhackett
@besim https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]ial/109370899315393013
To all those who complain that Mastodon does not have universal search:

1. use hashtags. Hashtags work across servers and Mastodon adds value to the idea of hashtags.

2. it took Twitter years (!) to get a working search up and running. You don't just set up an index on that scale.

3. Distributing searches in a decentralized way is challenging, but certainly not impossible and can even be quite efficient from a load perspective. Give people time.

Steven Rogge Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett I'd like a search for my own posts, my bookmarks/favourites and for the posts of people I follow. Nothing more because of the risk of abuse.

James Devine Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett Great idea to have a poll, but how would you implement global text search without either massive overhead on all instances (distributed search) or a centralised service? (I'm still learning about the nuts and bolts of activitypub, so may have overlooked something obvious.) Also, blackjack!?

Krister Renaud Nov 19, 2022

@conradhackett Google will be crawling Mastodon instances just like they crawl twitter so how much is won by not having search built in? I have already found toots using Google.

kram1032 Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett proper search is essential for discovery. I really hope that can actually happen.

M Eilo Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett Hashtags let posters consent to searchability. Those that want to be found can add them, those that don't leave them off.

witchlectical runeterialist Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett voted "maybe" because i think we can only open the floodgates on open search by default after twitter is well and truly gone and we've had a few years to heal and do better

Jason Noffsinger Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett with the ability to opt out if you are uncomfortable with it. Consent first.

@conradhackett look I understand asking the question, but it's slightly disturbing to see someone who joined in November 2022 post a poll asking "Does this place need to add a feature that it was deliberately, specifically designed not to have?" and get this response. The great thing is the feature is very unlikely to be added, for the very reason that the developer *made an explicit, public decision not to include free-text search because it is the #1 driver of abusive behaviour on Twitter*.

Erich Schulz Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett I think "only index hashtags" should be opt in with defaults set at a server and user level. And then users being able to decide for each toot.

NaomiElizabeth Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett

Only if sufficiently granular permissions exist between instances, so that each may individually choose how they respond to others' requests: 'zero communication', 'no searches', 'only hashtag searches', or 'full searches'.

Freedom of association must be protected every bit as much as freedom of speech, including by pre-emptively excluding those who wish to say things where they aren't welcome.

Daniel Brotherston Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett Did anyone use search in twitter?

Twitter search was terrible, rarely used it and when I did I was cursing the whole way.

Seems like it's not really an important feature for a social network.

Justin Carinci Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett for the record, I voted yes, only to see it switch to no when I submitted it.

Marcel Fröhlich Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett Most people that just started on here think that cross site search is missing until they realise that it is not there for good reasons, it is intentionally so and not missing at all.

John Ferry Nov 20, 2022

@conradhackett I'm new here and so my thoughts should be downweighted; but whole-space search seems like a no-brainer, especially since many new users (and perhaps some veterans too) will choose servers without being fully informed. Also, lots of people have varied interests, so even well-chosen homes may not be perfect fits.