If you've been waiting for full-text #search on #Mastodon, please go to #TootFinder and sign in. The more, the merrier.
https://www.tootfinder.ch/
Thanks to @buercher for building it.
It's opt-in, not opt-out. It respects Mastodon culture and doesn't index accounts that don't sign in.
That means the index might be small if we don't spread the word.
@ezekiel
That is not how safety and privacy works, I fear. Privacy is a friction landscape (as put by Luciano Floridi): even if something is out in a publicly accessible space, making it much easier to access (changing the friction) affects its privacy profile, and can be dangerous for someone.
Classic example was that data dump from okcupid.
@gubi @petersuber
@gvdr @ezekiel @gubi @petersuber
Interesting reference to "friction". In a social network, any additional search facility impacts on all users, not just those opting in. It does so through the out-of-context visibility of all posts that are referenced by accounts using the facility. And through the associated change in culture: people will look at posts differently.
Mastodon has an agreed search standard: each author decides how their posts are found, via hashtags. Stay with the standard.
@petersuber @buercher Hey folks! I did do this b/c I believe the fediverse should be searchable.
I've been asked if this means "can read DMs" and I honestly don't know (I'll never use DMs for truly private comms so I don't care, but others do).
@hrbrmstr @buercher @petersuber
It would be easier to trust the claims if the software had an open source license so it could be inspected, tested, and improved upon. Just like Mastodon itself.
@hrbrmstr @petersuber @buercher Dial it back to `read:statuses` permission. I know the #Mastodon docs are crap. Live and learn.
(Saying “I don’t care about #privacy because I don’t use it” is a pretty crappy stance too. You’re throwing a service on the Internet with others’ information. Time to start caring.)
/cc @todb
@petersuber @buercher nice idea. I do not understand why it needs access to everything though?
This includes private messages and all those sent to only a specific audience. I only want the public ones to be searchable...
Why not just verify it's me and then use the public accessible timeline for the index?
@thejasonhearne @petersuber @buercher Maybe I like to run much more specific searches than you, Jason, but hashtags are nowhere near precise enough for me even IF people were using them in every single toot.
Even when it comes to just searching my *own* toots--"where is the one specific dog photo I posted where the story I told included X?" is impossible unless I happened to hashtag that word, which would've been super weird.
@thejasonhearne @petersuber @buercher I don't want people to use proprietary, centralized social media, that's the problem. The problem is that the most popular federated social media platform is basically taken hostage by a small minority of condescending idiots, which makes it harder and harder to get people to understand the benifits of decentralized social media.
Driving people off the platform will just embolded Elon Musk more, and shitty social media practices more.
@thejasonhearne @petersuber @buercher
Your one short sentence sums up what is wrong with these additional search tools.
Mastodon has a search standard that is a deliberate design feature, supporting a particular communication dynamics. The standard is to let each author decide for each post how the post can be found, via hashtags.
One can't just introduce alternative mechanisms that deliberately violate those search standards and pretend it doesn't alter the system.
Use hashtags.
@petersuber @buercher great that search is opt in. Now I think about it, I won't.
As searchers we like to be able to search, so to help that is one reason to opt in.
But what about as being searched? What's the benefit - that anyone can find me or things I toot about quickly 🤔
I'm not sure I want that. I'm good with people finding me more organically and having to follow me and read my stuff if they see value in it.
That mirrors offline community better IMO and that's worth considering.
@petersuber @buercher immediately after tooting that reply I remembered I routinely use hashtags, which is a toot by toot opt-in search!
It's different, I control what is discoverable and how, but it goes against my reasoning somewhat so this needs more... 🤔
@petersuber @buercher Question: just saw the authorisation dialogue and it says read-only access to “everything”. Does that include followers-only and direct messages?
If so, is this a limitation in the granularity of the Mastodon API?
CC @Gargron
@petersuber @buercher I love to see this kind of organic and ground-up experimentaton with how to build out this platform.
Its such an empowering ecosystem, as opposed to being at the whim of behind-closed-doors, profit-oriented architects. #fediverse #mastodonmigration
@petersuber @buercher @stargazersmith
i know it’s a proof-of-concept so some features are missing; the one that leaps out at me is that CW’d content is not masked — maybe you should mention that in a message near the search box for now so people are prepared to see potentially personally disturbing stuff in the results
to be clear on what I suggest: until/unless you implement CW masking for real, add an explanation, e.g. inside the existing “Privacy Note” you could add:
* CWs are not masked
* DMs are (or are not) indexed
(DMs are also a hack in Mastodon, right? iirc they’re not really secret, just marked with a “direct” flag, so it’s important to clarify whether they are or aren’t going to appear in results)
@alexch It seems that content warnings are loosely formated in tweets as beginning with the text Content warning: in a strong tag. I can try to build a mask with that.
As for the DM. I have the impression they are not in the RSS feed at all, but I do not find anything in the documentation.
@buercher
ah, so you’re using the RSS feed not the ActivityPub feed, which means that there are two layers of jank on top of the AP spec (Mastodon overloads/misuses AP’s “subject” field as a “cw” field; then it apparently renders it into a mere HTML snippet inside its RSS output)
i bet you’re right that Masto omits DMs from the RSS feed already. i could look through the Mastodon source code later to confirm that, if you like
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