Jan Lehnardt 🛋️Jan 12, 2023

Hi everybody, I’m ready to unveil my year-end-holiday-hack project:

Meet Searchtodon: ***Private*** Timeline Search for Mastodon

It fills a gap that I have been missing over on Twitter as well: “I remember seeing this THING, where was that again?”

It is built with privacy and consent in mind (pls see the FAQ), but is also *an experiment* to see if something like this is accepted by the larger Mastodon community.

Here goes: https://searchtodon.social

Ex-Searchtodon: Private Timeline Search for Mastodon

Show threadJan Lehnardt 🛋️Jan 14, 2023

As promised, here’s an update on Searchtodon.

I have shut it down & deleted all data (as of 14:06 CET today).

As implemented, it does not gel *with* the Mastodon community, although the functionality did prove useful to a lot of people.

I’m working on a retrospective that hopefully can inform future experimenters.

Thanks everybody for giving it a try and for all your constructive feedback!

Show threadJayJan 14, 2023
@janl I think a relevant next thing to help clarify author expectations (not that you can or should do it necessarily) is a fully-client-side single-user tool for storing and locally searching all toots seen (maybe in browser local-storage?).
Show threadJayJan 14, 2023
@janl Such a client could be reasonably described as unusual, specifically in that it provides extra assistance to its user in remembering toots they have previously seen. With regards to confirming whether the existing opt-in of accepting a follow request (or posting a non-followers-only toot) is intended to include the use of such an "unusual client", I can see a range of possibilities: 🧵
Show threadJayJan 14, 2023
@janl On one end, the tool could keep a list of accounts it has seen, and when a new account is seen for the first time, it could automatically send a DM, explaining that the sender is using an unusual client, and asking for explicit permission for this memory-assistance to be provided covering this author's toots. And it would only include them once such confirmation was received (including blanket confirmation via a profile hashtag). (Expanded on: https://mindly.social/@JavierKolstad/109688872280348872 )
Jay (@[email protected])

Thoughts about #Fediverse community understandings of #optIn #consent. My current sense of a generally accepted method for getting opt-in consent by authors for a new client feature would be: 🧵

Mindly.Social
Show threadJay
@janl On the opposite end, I think it's justifiable to consider that the use of accessibility tools (ranging from text-to-speech, magnification, and including memory-assistance ones like this) isn't the legitimate business of authors, so no confirmation or notification is appropriate.
Jan 14, 2023 at 4:45pmWeb
Show threadJayJan 14, 2023
@janl Between these two poles, there are various middle options, too: Closer to the author-control end would be to send the same DMs, but not permit the author the option of continuing to have the receiver as a follower but forbid the receiver from using the accessibility tool. i.e. just inform the author: "I'm now using this tool; block me if you wish".
Show threadJayJan 14, 2023

@janl Also in the middle, but closer to the not-the-authors-business end, would be to post a notice on the profile, but not send specific DMs to each author.

Those are the options I've thought of; there are likely others, but I thought this was useful to write up. Thanks again for your efforts around this!