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):
I’ve now been enjoying #Mastodon for 10 months & am delighted by the thoughtful engagement here. I’m also increasingly interested to learn more about who I’m connecting with in the fediverse.
@Sheril (so called) Australian here. I came across a post and got lost in your wonderful timeline this morning. Thank you for your thoughtful and informative posts!
Thus begins a first for me on two levels, one I will be simultaneously live tweeting, tooting and skeeting along with a movie and two that movie will be Swordfish from 2001, which I have never seen before.
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
I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart, also anyone who takes the time to read my poems
Unfortunately the rhymes are lost in the english translation and so is the rhythm
Who knows german, please read the german
Or help with the translation? 🙏🏼😊
#AltText The rain The rain, it washes everything away, The sorrow and the pain that's there. Standing in the rain, hoping and praying. That washes clean, this gloomy life. The questions an answer find, the rain and tears combine. That a solution will arise, The doubts are now forgiven. That washes clean, the guilt the heavy. The darkness now fades away, the sun is reaching me. That probing questions, that never asked, the answer to which, will now decay. That washes itself clean, What only the rain can wash clean. That questions that weigh down my heart, No longer deny me life. That the future, so uncertain, Will be bathed in the light I miss. That washes clean what torments my heart. Now take me with you, wash me away. Let me forget this terrible place. The mistakes that bind me today in the past they disappear. Since gloomy now my life, I can only give you the darkness in the rain. And yet and yet, I still hope to find the brightness. To fathom with you the friends here, to join the rain with the sun's beauty. Together we can then say there, the rain it washes everything away. Washes everything now infinitely pure, Now I know, with you, my heart is never, never alone.
They learn to trust, they learn to share,
A newfound kinship strong and rare.
In strength they find, in hands they hold,
A warmth that’s brighter than pure gold.
The sun, it rises, breaks the night,
Its golden rays, a wondrous sight.
Through every trial, every plight,
It pushes through, igniting light.
And so it is, in stranger’s face,
A friend emerges, finding place.
Belief in strength, in bonds we weave,
Together, brighter days achieve.
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.
⚠️ 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!
#Mastodon forms new 501(c)(3) non-profit entity with new board of directors in the United States to facilitate tax-deductible donations and in-kind support:
We've noticed that a lot of you had some questions about this announcement, so we've collected the most important ones in a new FAQ section on the page above 👆
I have re-read the magnificent article by @kissane, titled "Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t". On Bluesky, she asked those people who had tried/used Mastodon and bounced off, what had led them to slow down or leave.
Couldn’t find people or interests, people didn’t stay
Too confusing, too much work, too intimidating
Too serious, too boring, anti-fun
Complicated high-stakes decisions
"I don’t know if Mastodon can grapple with the complexities of mass scale. Lots of people would prefer it didn’t—staying smaller and lower-profile makes it friendly to amateur experimentation and also a lot safer for people who need to evade various kinds of persecution. But if Mastodon and other fedi projects do take on the mass scale, their developers must consider the needs of people who aren’t already converts. That starts by asking a lot of questions and then listening closely and receptively to the answers you receive."
For many parts I agree. But despite everything, Mastodon/Fediverse is still the best place to be on social media. Let's make this even better. We have the power. #Mastodon#OpenSource#Fediverse#Bluesky#BlueskySocial
@rolle
> Mastodon/Fediverse is still the best place to be on social media. Let's make this even better.
100%. One problem that causes friction for newbies is the expectation that Mastodon can be all things to all people. Somehow we need to convince people who want an InstaGram/TikTok-a-like experience to try PixelFed, or people who want more of a neighbourhood feel to try Hometown, or people who want Quote Posts to try FireFish. The fediverse has so much more to offer than Mastodon.
@wrigleyfield I have over 7000 followers on Twitter and nowadays and posts get barely any comments whatsover. And if so, the trolls...
Here on the contrary, hundreds of comments, lots of boosts... etc. It's like two different worlds.
On my instance and many others like https://universeodon.com there's open text search available. Hashtags are good too. This place works already (at least for me) better than Twitter ever did.
I was looking for a reply in a post earlier this year but then found it's gone. This is kinda a downside, I wish old replies could be re-fetched, never thought it's "impossible to undo".
It could work in a way it would backfill the replies once the post is accessed, but tech-wise I understand if it's not possible.
Question for admins: Are you doing something to circumvent this?
@rolle I completely disabled this function on my instance when I learned the scope of this functionality. I was shocked when I found the real scope in a Github issue. When I configured this, the text your instance shows was not yet there and thus a huge issue because it also wasn't in their docs.
E.g. for bookmarks this is an issue if you want to remember a post for a reason. :)
wife tested positive for covid. It's bad. Online Doc refused to prescribe #Paxlovid citing she's <50yrs. Said LongCovid isn't real and pretty much gaslit the thing.
PCP offices are closed.
CVS w/o prescription requires labwork that we don't have handy.
@upol
I think there are a lot of great people in medicine but they’re trapped in a screwy system that brings out the worst. I don’t have the answer to fix it. There are so many entrenched special interests.
Been trying this out secretly for the past few weeks — a "catch-up" timeline page. Did whole bunch of iterations, where I myself is the guinea pig, but this time reaching a point where I just got to share it out in the public.
NOT final design, still very experimental, only on my local machine
Instead of algo timeline, this is focused on data-grid-like UI for configuring exactly what I want to see.
This honestly could be another full-fledged app/client by itself 🫠
#Mastodon bringt "Quote Posts" ab Version 4.4 (aktuell ist 4.3). Wir dürfen gespannt sein, ob dieses zum teil umstrittene Feature irgendwas an der Kultur hier ändert. Vermutlich hängt das maßgeblich davon ab, wie es im Detail implementiert ist.
@mina@marquito@2ndStar@allgeier@RAlpenstern
Der Code war eine Variante des Codes, mit dem wir das Root-Passwort eines Sysadmins knacken wollten, um ihm zu zeigen, dass es zu schwach war. (Einer von uns hatte diesem Sysadmin ein kurz zuvor eine Fehlkonfiguration gemeldet, die es jedem Userr weltweit erlaubt hätte, auf seinen Kisten root zu werden…)
Long story short: Wir mussten dann einen Brief schreiben, dass wir das nie wieder tun würden oder so. #WhiteHat
Hello #Mastodon, I am seeking comments from the community to include in my next newsletter about #Google's change in their privacy policy. (They now say that anything you post online will be used to train their AI models.)
I am especially interested of thoughts from #writers and #artists.
How do you feel about this move? What do you think about placing your content behind a wall to protect it? And will this change how you post online in the future?
Note to #Tech folks - don't have to remind me that #Google has been scraping and collecting data since forever. I was there when the Internet was born and I work in tech. I KNOW 😆
It would help to know, however, what the layperson can do to protect their #privacy in practical ways.
Roll over and give up is not a handy tip 😘
@liztai - It simply makes me think of the statement by former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy in regards to the internet privacy; "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it!"
Google will do whatever they want to do regardless, the only change here is the admission, IMHO.