As to be expected, people are going completely ape-shit crazy over it and demand either Eugen Rochko take this decision back once and for all or at least an immediate fork with search completely removed and blocked for all Mastodon instances that have search. They don't even trust the opt-in.
In the meantime, most other #Fediverse projects have had full-text search for years. And they've been full-text search-indexing Mastodon toots as well. #Friendica and #Hubzilla have been continuously full-text search-indexing incoming Mastodon toots as long as since 2016.
Not only has there never been an opt-in switch for that, but there hasn't even been an #OptOut switch. There's no protection against it whatsoever, short of defederating your instance from everything that isn't #VanillaMastodon. Which, by the way, is akin to Whack-a-Mole.
Literally. Nobody. Cared. At all. Ever.
Of course not. Because nobody even knew that.
Most Mastodon users still seem to think the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Most of those who don't still can't imagine that anything out there could have features that Mastodon doesn't have. Even if I tell it straight into their faces, they can't grasp it.
I don't really think that ignorance is bliss in this case...
Remember, everyone: #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse. And whatever feature you could imagine in your wildest dreams that Mastodon has, there's at least one project out there that has this feature already now, and that's federated with Mastodon.
P.S.: Even if Mastodon uses an ActivityPub standard feature for search opt-in, for it does, that doesn't mean that the whole rest of the Fediverse will soon respect it.
@jupiter_rowland
I truly appreciate this post. It exposes a lot of the bad actors of Mastodon. There’s no reason people shouldn’t know the truth about the features you have mentioned. I’m not sure how it was able to permeate the culture
We've introduced an alternate proposal based on sane principles, but since we're nobody, it hasn't gotten much attention. I don't know how Mastodon thinks they can stop people from searching stuff on their own instances or even in their browser stream. Or on Google or Bing. We only protect searches on your own site because that's the limit of our control.
But this actually works well for providing search access to protected (non-public) resources - which nobody else is really doing... and it's all based on open standards and doesn't require Amazon technology to function.
I don't know how Mastodon thinks they can stop people from searching stuff on their own instances or even in their browser stream. Or on Google or Bing.
For Web search engines, Mastodon has a switch to keep them out.
Otherwise, the Mastodon devs are fully aware that the other Fediverse projects can and do search-index Mastodon, but they don't say a word about it. Not only because they'd acknowledge the existence of a Fediverse outside Mastodon, but they wanted their users to believe that if Mastodon doesn't have full-text search, it's safe from full-text search altogether.
@mikedev
I just wanted to be sure ☺️
Once I wrap up I for sure will dive into the docs.
Btw, I would love to connect with you whenever you have some free time. I’m for sure interested in your approaches and thoughts. Plus, it’s always cool to learn more about this space.
@jupiter_rowland "Most Mastodon users still seem to think the Fediverse is only Mastodon." -> I wonder, what makes you believe that? Its absolute not my experience and I would consider myself a "normal" Mastodon-user.
"Most Mastodon users still seem to think the Fediverse is only Mastodon." -> I wonder, what makes you believe that? Its absolute not my experience and I would consider myself a "normal" Mastodon-user.
Most likely a loud minority or newcomers. And when talking about the fediverse, a lot of people are surprised that there are alternatives to Twitter and Facebook out there. I've been introducing this technology to a lot of people, and even developers and tech enthusiasts are sometimes surprised that this stuff exists. So it would not be surprising that if someone found Mastodon, they wouldn't automatically realize that there is other stuff out there unless someone told them or they stumbled upon it.
Earlier this year, around February or March, it was absolutely common to stumble upon Mastodon users who have joined during the second #TwitterMigration in Neveber, and who still "knew" that the Fediverse was only Mastodon. I sometimes had a hard time telling people that I'm not on Mastodon, that I'm on something that is totally not Mastodon, but yes, I can communicate with them, and yes, that's normal and intentional and an actual feature and not a black-hat hack. Mind you, many of them joined when mastodon.social was so overrun with new members that they had to close registration and divert newcomers to other instances, so that wasn't a time of "mastodon.social monoculture".
My most popular post ever by far was Re-inventing the federated wheel because you don't know that wheels exist from March. It's about how asking for certain new features on Mastodon doesn't make much sense if other Fediverse projects have those self-same features readily available already now. It was boosted and liked like crazy and then boosted and liked some more.
That's because it was an eye-opener for many Mastodon users. Not insofar as other Fediverse projects already offer these features, but insofar as other projects than Mastodon exist in the Fediverse in the first place. And offer these features, yes.
After three or four months, Mastodon users have usually become aware of there being other Fediverse projects, even other than the ubiquitous #Pixelfed and #PeerTube. I'm only aware of one encounter with someone who still thought that the Fediverse was only Mastodon after five months.
Later, I've been told that some Mastodon users take up to three months to even learn that their Mastodon instance is not the equivalent of twitter.com, not a centralised silo, but one out of many instances, and that Mastodon is decentralised. So I guess there's a Gauss curve for this as well.
@💭 tinderness @Jupiter Rowland There's room for exceptions in "most" eventually. In certain circles of more adept, long-time Mastodon users the word Fediverse surely has a different meaning, than with recent Ex-Twitter refugees, no?
@💭 tinderness That was my impression, based on how a lot of talk about the #Fediverse completely ignores anything that isn't #Mastodon.
Many things hint at the Fediverse beyond Mastodon being largely unknown.
The full-text search debate is one thing. It's all about whether or not Mastodon should have full-text search. The opponents thought that if they had managed to stop the introduction of full-text search to Mastodon, Mastodon would be safe from full-text search.
There was literally no awareness whatsoever of the "peril" of just about all the other Fediverse projects which have been happily full-text search-indexing Mastodon toots for years, some even since Mastodon was launched.
Or quotes and "quote-toots". Mastodon users want to keep the former from being introduced because they fear it'd lead to the latter which, in turn, would lead to the same kind of harassment as with quote-tweets on X. They believe that if Mastodon doesn't introduce quotes, they're safe because they can be neither quoted nor "quote-tooted".
Almost all the other Fediverse projects that can do something like micro-blogging can quote. And #Friendica, #Hubzilla and #Streams can both quote and quote-tweet any Mastodon toot. They've had both features since their own inception. Awareness of this should rise, now that Mastodon can display quotes from other projects correctly.
Also, I keep seeing new side-projects pop up which their developers declare as "for the Fediverse", but it quickly becomes obvious that they were built against Mastodon and only Mastodon, completely disregarding everything else. Granted, this occurred much more in late 2022 and early 2023 when lots of hobby devs escaped from Twitter, got all giddy over Mastodon, built stuff against it and then, weeks or months later, were told that the Fediverse is, in fact, more than just Mastodon.
On the one hand, there are those who complain about users not being able to restrain themselves and absolutely having to write "toots" with more than #500Characters. It's pretty clear that they always refer to users on "hacked" Mastodon instances with a raised #CharacterLimit. They don't explicitly mention the non-Mastodon Fediverse as the culprit although they should because having a much higher character limit is absolutely natural everywhere outside Mastodon. If you're somewhere that isn't Mastodon, and you do as people on that project naturally do, you're basically required to put a "CW: long" #ContentWarning in your summary field so that Mastodon users aren't disturbed by your #LongPost.
On the other hand, I sometimes see people wanting to be able to write more than 500 characters. They always ask which Mastodon instances have higher limits. They could easily move to #Firefish and take everything with them, even more easily than moving within Mastodon. And on Firefish, they wouldn't have to ask around which instance offers more than 500 characters because absolutely all do. But they don't. It is as if all the other Fediverse projects don't exist for them.
And if they get replies, it's practically always actually Mastodon instance suggestions. Unless I do, nobody comes and tells them it'd be more practical to simply go elsewhere in the Fediverse where much higher character counts are guaranteed than to try and find a Mastodon instance with a modified character count. It is as if all the other Fediverse projects don't exist for all those who have read the question either.
Speaking of which, the "rule" that an #ImageDescription always has to go into the #AltText. Even a detailed one. A detailed image description doesn't even belong into alt-text. That's how things are done in the Fediverse, and that's how they have to be done.
It's just that they have to be done that way because of Mastodon's limitations. You've only got 500 characters per toot. Minus the actual toot text, minus mentions, minus content warnings, minus hashtags. But you've got 1,500 characters of alt-text per image exclusively for the image description.
Absolutely everywhere else, you've got several times as many characters for the post text than for alt-text. You've actually got more room for an image description in the post itself where everyone can access it than in the alt-text where certain physically disabled users can't access it. Absolutely everywhere else.
This is completely being disregarded. The only one who ever writes about this, that's me. It seems like the very concept is completely alien and unimaginable for just about everyone else out there.
That being said, I've got two on-going polls about how Fediverse users in general and Mastodon users specifically see the non-Mastodon Fediverse. The sample sizes are small, some have learned through these polls that there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon, and some may have made use of a new feature in Mastodon 4.2.0 and "peeped" to see what's the "right" answer. But currently only 2% of the voters on the German poll and 4% on the English poll still believed that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. And 4% of the voters on the German poll and 2% on the English poll want it to be only Mastodon.
But currently only 2% of the voters on the German poll and 4% on the English poll still believed that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. And 4% of the voters on the German poll and 2% on the English poll want it to be only Mastodon.
So, basically, a loud minority that is either vocal or so sure of themselves, they don't want to hear something other than what they think is true.
If you're somewhere that isn't Mastodon, and you do as people on that project naturally do, you're basically required to put a "CW: long" #ContentWarning in your summary field so that Mastodon users aren't disturbed by your #LongPost.
Which does not even make sense to me, since Mastodon automatically collapses long posts. You have to click to see the whole thing. You would think that the presence of a link to expand the content would be sufficient warning that the content is longer.
So, basically, a loud minority that is either vocal or so sure of themselves, they don't want to hear something other than what they think is true.
No, they actually, genuinely don't know. They don't know any other Fediverse projects than Mastodon. Mastodon is the Fediverse to them.
Which does not even make sense to me, since Mastodon automatically collapses long posts. You have to click to see the whole thing. You would think that the presence of a link to expand the content would be sufficient warning that the content is longer.
The Web interface.
But unlike Hubzilla which is entirely used through its Web interface, the vast majority of Mastodon users use dedicated mobile apps. Many have never in their lives seen or touched the Mastodon Web interface.
And there is at least one Mastodon app that doesn't collapse long posts. It was obviously developed under the assumption that the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon, and toots with over 500 characters will never happen because they're impossible.
Maybe other apps offer the option to show all posts at full length for the users' convenience. And of course some users have chosen that option out of convenience.
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