@Hey_Beth@mike Sorry to seem obtuse here, but Iʼd like to know the wording for the option of search. On my instance, settings/preferences/other has a toggle for "Opt-out of search engine indexing Affects your public profile and post pages "
Is that what allow full text search?
Also, most journalists and professionals have noted that the lack of a search function is the reason that they are not using Mastodon/fediverse more. They really don't want to search for typical Mastodon/fediverse users. They want to search other journalists and professionals for networking and informational purposes, and they want to have people be able to search for their content.
I wish we could let people who have been here a while do opt in, and new accounts be opt out. if they're coming here from other networks, they are used to being searched (maybe without knowing it).
@Hey_Beth First, you're posting in a public forum your expectation of privacy is low. Second I believe that for the function to truly work as advertised it needs a network effect. Users who are indifferent won't bother to opt in and an important feature in the evolution of the platform will be severely hobbled. Third there Mastodon has a large number of moderation tools available to both mods and users to provide a high level of safety.
@mike@Mary625@Hey_Beth That depends on what you mean by "private". There are levels of privacy: speaking in your own home, in a private members club, on the street, or on national media, all have different levels of expectation of privacy.
@Mary625@Hey_Beth I'm defending search as its been overwhelming identified as one of the reasons people don't adopt Mastodon. Personally I probably won't use it much.
And people not wanting to opt in to that is a problem for you? And we should care because your need to know personal posts content is more important than their privacy?
@Mary625@Hey_Beth My problem is that the, search feature will most likely remain useless without a network effect, because the indifferent will most likely not opt in.
@Hey_Beth I find that a weak defense in so far as I find it hard to Beleive users don't know posting to a public forum means thst their posts are public. Yours and my posts have already been indexed hundreds of times by the internet at large.
@Hey_Beth I disagree. If you put a bulliten board up at Starbucks do you the ban photography of the posts for fear of wider decemination? If people are looking for semi private forums I think this is the wrong platform.
@Hey_Beth I stated my position in a post and then presented a poll in the next post. I did not ask for opinions per se, I was responding to arguments against my position.
I've detected no nastiness or disrespect yet, just discourse.
@mike should always side on privacy. Its a lot harder to get private info back. Yes we shouldn't expect anything on the internet to be private, but I digress
There are good points on both sides, but realistically I don't think it makes a difference. There will be enough people who opt in for it to be useful. And I think either way you'd end up with close to the same numbers. A lot of the people who would opt in but don't think about are also probably not that active.
But I also don't think there is going to be any huge change from search. It's a lot of hand wringing.
Making them searchable outside hashtag search can lead to pile ons as we have seen in other sites. Nasty people set out to search for text and use it to attack people. Imagine a young person who's pregnant, loves babies , wants one badly but had their relationship break down, facing eviction and doesn't know how she is going to look after herself, let alone a baby. She should be able to talk freely and get support from the community here and not be subjected to right wong nutters from another country typing in "abortion" and piling on her, either now or 2, 3, 6 years later.
Unlisted posts don't appear outside your followers and are different
Email marketing can opt you in to send you marketing material?
No.
We had had this debate 20 years ago.
People have to opt in to give permission to have marketing material emailed.
Why because someone has had to explicitly give permission.
If you set default as opt out, you are NOT getting permission you are being sneaky and most people will not know they are being searched and policies have changed.
We are not like the wild policy swings of X
If is is so great and wanted and benifitial people will gladly opt in.
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