Full text search has been merged in #Mastodonmain 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.
To opt into your content being searchable, once your instance is upgraded to support this feature, head to the your profile, and the new “Privacy and reach" tag, then tick the "include public posts in search”.
We will try to ensure users know this setting exists, nothing 100% defined yet, but we may add a dismissible banner asking to review your privacy settings page.
Full-text search allows you to search for words in the content of statuses (if your instance has ElasticSearch configured), compared to the current version which only allows searching for hashtags.
In addition, you get a whole lot of search modifiers for advanced search (no UI for those yet):
@auschwitzmuseum I would also like to suggest that you temporarily cease the feed of Holocaust victims from the previous century and begin broadcasting the names, photos, and stories of Holocaust victims from Simhat Torah
Your organization has no other purpose than to prevent the horrors which Israel experienced on Simhat Torah. Now that you have failed in that - now that we have all failed in that - the least you can do is support the war effort with every resource you have.
#Mastodon 4.2 is rolling out across the social web! On our quest to make Mastodon more delightful and easy to use, we've overhauled search, sign-ups, cross-server interactions and a whole lot more:
@Mastodon Thanks for this update! The overhaul of the search function is fantastic. I noticed recently that indeed the search function now operates on the bio too, which is super useful to find more people to follow. Keep up the good work!
Loving accessibility things such as bigger link previews, padded out context menus, focus change indication, and working thread indication (consequent nested replies still look disconnected from parent, though). Also, collapsed closure hashtags are bae - assumption that hashtags in the end of post are meant for better discoverability (as opposed to something we would like to consciously read) is always the correct one and I'm glad it's taken care of. #Mastodon is a maître of microblogging, so I hope more similar platforms take this into consideration now that it's a thing out of beta.
We are going to continue our trial here for at least another six months while we share our findings internally and seek more engagement from other BBC teams. We are also planning to start researching ways to publish more BBC content using ActivityPub.
Just a reminder that, in case you don’t already, you can follow our R&D colleagues who work on news innovation - @BBC_News_Labs - and our team creating digital tools for creators to explore: @Connected_Studio
And for more regular updates, our colleagues at @BBCRadio4 and @BBC5Live bring you the best of what’s happening on those radio networks!
In truth, it has been pretty disappointing to see rather limited engagement by the BBC accounts. There was quite a lot of excitement when BBC joined Mastodon but the accounts do not post regularly, and there isn't an official BBC News or BBC World account which are the main areas of interest for most audiences that access BBC services. There are other official media outlets that are much more integrated on Mastodon.
⚠️ We are planning to release important security fixes for #Mastodon on July 6th, between 13:00 and 15:00 UTC. They will be available for the 4.1, 4.0 and 3.5 versions as well as a nightly release, to make the upgrade as small and painless for everyone as possible. Be ready to upgrade!
@jynersolives Yep, although I suspect a lot of the new Threads followers is coming from people signing up who are then prompted to follow the people they followed on Instragram.
It is also why, only the BBC News, has talked about Mastodon.
We do not have real news in America.
In America we have a celebrity type reporter interviewing another celebrity type reporting about how they feel and think about whatever is going on. We have "news" that is far too opinionated and far too political and, as you pointed out, far too deep in corporate pockets to be factual.
@erlend I hope GitLab will manage to do everything they’re planning to join Fediverse. After that GitHub would need to hustle up do the same. I will help them with the roadmap:
Strangers offering unsolicited advice or derailing conversations should be familiar to all who use social media. In our new #Mastodon for Android update, we’re testing a new feature aimed to curb these behaviours:
@Mastodon Honestly, I feel that if someone doesn't want unsolicited advice, they shouldn't be publishing their thoughts in a public forum. If they're just communicating with a small group of friends (which of course is perfectly reasonable) there are places to do that in a much better way. Here ain't there.
@Mastodon It's good to see that there is genuine intention to continue improving Mastodon. Genuinely curious to see what effect this feature will have.
Realistically, a reminder to be nicer might work on someone replying impulsively, but quite a few people online feel entitled to responding to strangers without a filter to their language or aggression, and it's doubtful that this will have much effect on them.
From a glimpse, there are enough irritated and angry replies to this post alone, about this feature, perceiving it as seemingly something that polices how they use social media, to make one question if it'd stop the same people from responding in an aggressive way.
Beyond that, quite a few people are not aware that their unsolicited advice or comments are a form of microaggression, so they still believe that they are being nice, reminder or not.
I'm gonna second all the other people suggesting that a way to not allow replies, or control who replies, would be a welcome feature that people can opt-in or out from on an individual level, as it overall allows for more control.
Pragmatically, I don't think any of us expects to completely eliminate unwanted replies when posting publicly, but any option to limit them is a good step forward, especially when it comes to making social media more welcoming to minorities and marginalised groups. So it's good seeing this conversation happening.
Almost everyone who says "Mastodon didn't work for me" on Bluesky seems to have posted only "me me me" stuff for months (if that) on Mastodon, followed about 10-20 people, never replied to anyone and then gave up because "nobody there, it didn't fly".
It seems there is a big misunderstanding how this free and healthy social media works. We are not here for the easy wins, likes, shares and dopamine spikes. We are here because we accept the fact we are not part of the commercial hype machine. We choose natural engagement over spoiling algorithms, we choose conversation and meaning in our social media. At least that is how I see it.
@rolle
Corporate 'Social' Media
Is a competition space for gaining followers, ego-boosting, #shitposting & self promotion. It is how they are built & designed. A few massively circulated posts, from handful of accounts & a vast sea of ignored posts.
Community #Social#Media
Is a cooperative space for finding friends, learning stuff, supporting each other &having fun. With attention spread between users far more evenly. It is not a social overlords vs serf audience model. #Fedi#Fediverse
We started this account less than 6 months ago. It's going pretty well – thanks to you: 4.2k followers, lots of interactions, questions, and comments. 🎉
A couple of weeks ago, the European Broadcasting Union (#EBU) asked us to write a guest article about our experience with #Mastodon / the #Fediverse, explain the basics, and point out the advantages. :mastodon:
Challenge accepted. 👍
So here's the finished post by @lxplm, hot off the #blog press. ⌨️
Reminds me of a reddit-post where a smallish game developer noted that while their game sold a fraction on linux than it did on windows, 95% of bug reports came from linux and almost all were applicable to improving the windows-version. Better yet: the bug reports were detailed and easy to replicate.
So they upkept the linux-version not for the sales, but for the feedback that allowed the improvement on Windows -- which in turn led to sales.
⚠️ We have just released important security fixes for the #Mastodon server software. Versions 4.1.3, 4.0.5, 3.5.9, as well as a new nightly are available now to make upgrading quick and painless. Please upgrade as soon as possible!
this may be useful for some here:
If during the build phase on docker you encounter
Bundler::HTTPError Could not fetch specs from <https://rubygems.org/> due to underlying error <Net::OpenTimeout: execution expired (<https://rubygems.org/specs.4.8.gz>)>
Then an unsatisfactory workaround is to temporarily disable IPv6 on your docker daemon.
It's release day! #Mastodon 4.2 will drop later today. I'm very excited for all the improvements we've been working on since January to become available to all server operators and their users.
@cultdev There are some things you won't see because they're visual changes to the web interface; but things like search and higher quality images will be available through apps without any upgrades.