I didn’t realize this before, but as more people join up, human history on the internet will be here. We will need a search engine to replace Google because Google probably can’t search the fediverse. It’s a very interesting problem for sure. For example, if I need car trouble help, I search “reddit, Honda Civic 2005, starter noises” and I get useful information from others. If you don’t add “reddit” you get garbage results. One day, reddit will be just one guy keeping the lights on like the myspace guy or that meta or Tweeter guy. It’s going to suck if we can’t find each other’s ideas and posts.
Just read some of the discussion over why this project was stopped.
I am probably being dull, but I don’t get it. Why is having a search engine to search over the fediverse a bad thing? Why does that help trolls? And how is this antithetical to the values of the fediverse?
@Sal @imgprojts I’ve been wondering the same thing for a while, as apparently that’s also the reason for Mastodon (and others too, I guess) not allowing users to search for posts if not by hashtag. I can’t really figure out what’s the problem that this decision aims to solve.
@junbird @Sal @imgprojts maybe due to missing central index, rather many local, distributed ones. But, I am just guessing. Full-text indices may also be cumbersome to distribute.