Full text search has been merged in #Mastodon `main` branch, and will be in the next (and final?) 4.2.0 beta 🎉

It is opt-in, so it will take some time to be filled with people content as they enable their profile to be indexed, but this was one of the most wanted Mastodon features for some time.

We plan to deploy it to mastodon.social and mastodon.online in the coming days to have a bit more feedback on it and see how it behaves in the wild.

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

- DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

- Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K."
"What about Kenya?"
"Kenya suck deez nuts?"

Google Search is over.

Around 48h after the release of #Threads it's not linked that much on #Twitch channel pages:

Affiliates (3,257,712):
- Twitter: 1,239,093 (38.04%)
- Threads: 433 (0.01%)

Partners (72,715):
- Twitter: 47,045 (64.7%)
- Threads: 42 (0.06%)

There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

The thing that saddens me the most about the whole fedi/meta drama is a thing I can't prove, but that I think is likely because I've worked in these kinds of tech companies.

The notion that Meta is looking to embrace/extend/extinguish the fediverse is laughable. The entire fedi userbase is a rounding error for Meta. They arent looking to take down the fediverse, they're trying to take down TWITTER.

They want the celebs and journalists back. Take advantage of Twitter's tarnished reputation.

Reddit’s CEO, who claimed to want to emulate Musk, is doing an absolutely smashing job.

He forced some subreddits to open again, but of course he can’t force people to post what he wants.

r/steam users are now only posting articles about hot water vapor.
r/pics users are only posting sexy photos of John Oliver
r/gifs and r/Art are also limiting content to John Oliver.

I'm gonna try to clear up a few things

Meta is not gonna buy Mastodon or any server, this is based on absolutely nothing and untrue.

Yes, some of us indeed got contacted by Meta/Insta because they are working on a new social platform (this was in the news) and they are looking into joining the Fediverse (Mark Zuckerberg also told this in the recent podcast)

SO.

This contact was about a "heads-up" for a potential big platform to join the network and not for a "take over".

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