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is there a search engine for the fediverse? (leminal.space)

submitted 6 months ago by DaseinPickle@leminal.space to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Since big part of the web is drowning in AI junk, including Reddit, is there a good search engine to find answers in the fediverse?

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[-] Zak@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

Lemmy search works pretty well on larger servers, and they're indexed by major web search engines.

The microblog side of things is worse, with Mastodon long having near-useless search because it might "encourage negative social dynamics" or some such. Some other software, such as Akkoma has had better search, and Mastodon has recently improved somewhat for accounts that opt into being searchable. Mastodon directs search engines not to index most pages.

Some people get very upset about attempts to build general-purpose fediverse search tools.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 8 points 6 months ago

At times the mastodon people sound like Alex Jones, only it's "techbros" instead of "globalists"

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

I think it's a small, but very loud minority who have unrealistic expectations about how other people will use data they share in a manner that's inherently rather public. I kind of see where they're coming from, but ActivityPub with open federation doesn't work that way.

[-] damon@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

What do you mean by “kind of see where they’re coming from”?

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

There are two general areas:

The history of the internet is full of examples of companies taking data about or creative output from people and trying to make money from it without permission, in ways the original creator might not like. Nobody has gone there with a Fediverse scraper or search project that we know of yet, but it's going to happen if the Fediverse gets big enough.
Some people want to be able to easily share things with a certain audience without them being easily discoverable by a different audience. There are of course privacy settings to control visibility and software like Matrix that provides not only access control by cryptographic security, but those add friction. It's only possible for this group to have it both ways if nobody develops good search tools, which turns some of them into bullies.