reiver,
@reiver@mastodon.social avatar

#AllYourBases with @atomicpoet & @reiver

Should search on the Fediverse be opt-in or opt-out?

Google doesn't care if you want search to be opt-in.

The difference between 'privacy' and 'obscurity'.

#DiscoverTheGreatApe #Fediverse #Google #Mastodon #Obscurity #Privacy #Search

ATOMICPOET: "[some] people believe their posts [on the Fediverse] aren't discoverable because when you do a search for them on Mastodon you can't find them." "But — here's the problem. Google still indexes those posts. And people really only discover that — really after the fact, right? I've had a number of people talk to me and they've said to me — "hey can you remove stuff from your server because Google is indexing that stuff", right?" "And — this is a problem with the Fediverse. The Fediverse exists It exists because — well, federation means you're copying stuff from one server to another server, right?" "And if you've opted to — there's different levels of visibility on the Fediverse, right? So there's obviously "direct", in which you send a message and only one person — the person you tag — actually only the people you tag see those messages. Those are, those are direct visibility. The next one is "followers only" — So only people who follow you can see your posts, right?Okay. And then there is "unlisted" where you don't have to be a follower to see a post, but it does not show up in public timelines. Okay. " Now, so far so good — the final rung of visibility is "public", right? I've had a lot of people send public posts on the Fediverse and they believe that they're not being indexed. But unfortunately they are. And you know, it's hard to explain to these people, to a lot of people how, you know — simply how privacy works because — I get the sense quite ..."

mike,
@mike@thecanadian.social avatar

@reiver @atomicpoet I believe search on fedi should be opt out, but with the option clearly communicated and not hidden. Search in social media is too critical a function to be hobbled and opt in definitely hobbles it. Your expectation of privacy on a one to many medium should be low to begin with. Insisting on default search privacy on public posts seems over the top.

volkris,

@reiver

I think it’s crucial for people to realize that Fediverse has basically no privacy protections, so regardless of what SHOULD be, fact is you don’t even have the choice.

When you post to Fediverse there is zero guarantee that your content won’t be subject to search.

It’s just part of the design of the system, for better or worse.

Fediverse was built around giving instances all the power, so if an instance wants to search, it can.

@atomicpoet

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