Tim BrayIn which I put my head in the lion’s jaws and write 2700 words about privacy and full-text search on #mastodon: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/30/Mastodon-Privacy-and-Search
Bud Gibson@timbray I don’t think instance owners will be able to comply with the bureaucracy. It strikes me that privacy focused people should actually be on a different platform.
Vic UzumeriI have questions about the practicalities of various search strategies.
1. How big will the search repository become? Twitter uses two big data centers and still outsources some of its activity to AWS and GCP, if various reports are correct. That is well beyond the capability of instance admins or even instance organizations to manage.
2. What is the time window of search. Right now, AFAIK, the hashtag search basically covers whatever the home instance has seen lately. That is a sort of ephemeral search that answers the question: "what's been said recently in my extended network?"
Twitter keeps everything from inception. That answers the question of "What has ever been said on this topic by anyone anywhere?" Those are two different search motivations and strategies, with huge cost differences.
3. If 3rd parties set up an expansive search engine, how will they pay for it?
If I have misunderstood the mechanics, please put me on the right path.
Sensible questions. But we have to get the policy issues right before we can even start worrying about them.
I am confused about where one can look for any policy decision in the Fediverse. If there's no centre of gravity for policy, the next best decision criteria is usually somewhere in the economics.
Matt@vicuzumeri @timbray @BudGibson - I would have purported that the next best decision criteria is probably legal rather than economic, but given that would only happen when someone takes advantage of a system it might be hard to prevent harm using that.
@vicuzumeri @timbray @BudGibson - and if all the legal protections currently in place were applied not convinced anyone would run one. (e.g. the requirement for an impressum containing real name and address when publishing a site that takes money even as donations and can be reached in DACH) - source: https://www.iubenda.com/en/help/7816-impressum-what-is-it-and-when-is-it-needed
We will have to wait and see how this movie turns out.
FWIW, my expectation is that the Fediverse will evolve differently from previous Internet technology cycles.
To me, the big new factor is the growing maturity of open source technologists and developers around the world.
IMO, the hegemony of the Silicon Valley VC billionaire bros is up for grabs.
Mastodon is the work product of a German developer. The next killer app design iteration may come from Kazakhstan, Mexico or Nigeria.
If this occurs, the legal issues will be more complex ... maybe impossible to enforce.
A kick ass Kazakh server technology could become a huge factor if it were quickly embraced by India, Phillipines and South America. Or any combo like that.
Then who sets legal policy?
Right now, the monolithic SV companies are driven by US law and, increasingly, EU law.
But that could change.