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):
#Bluesky continues to be entirely non-responsive to the numerous security vulnerabilities I've reported to them, so I spent the evening writing up a nice README and a framework with exploit modules, and just made it all public.
If for whatever reason you never wish to interact with #Threads, you can personally block it for your account. This hides all posts and profiles from Threads, prevents anyone from Threads from following you, and stops your posts from being delivered to or fetched by Threads. Simply click the "Block domain threads.net" option on any Threads profile or post you see in Mastodon.
#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!
The Zuck suck is in full swing. In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like "headphone status" and "screen density."
EDIT for clarity: The 200+ attempts may have been overcounted as DDG hadn't tooled their VPN for Threads yet.
@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.
@jon Possibly my OCD talking, but I wish we could omit the preceding "@". Stupid email, hogging the namespace! And I wish there was a way to unambiguously flag which service a qualified username refers to, without having to add an out of band clarification, or expecting users to either know domains by heart, or visit them in a browser to check.
@mastodonmigration@rexum Personal data usually carries a slightly different meaning than a public profile and posts you choose to broadcast to the open web, and the way this entire thread is written is highly misleading in a disappointing way.
BUT the EU version has a different section for USERS WITHOUT A THREADS PROFILE that probably is in response to EU rules.
The EU version is arguably OK, and would not have generated this post. The issues raised by this post relate to the US version, and specifically to those Fediverse users who do not have a Threads profile.