guyinahat (@werefreeatlast@mastodon.social)
mastodon.social
Do you guys realize that Google can't or isn't scraping Mastodon, Lemmy or the fediverse? The implications are astronomical! Would you be on a website that offers searching ads? That's Google. They are fucked! Once people leave into their local, unsearchable fediverse niche. Google's days are counted. Would you offer news for free to a company that sells ads? Or would you offer news on your own fediverse? Google is done...but we need a fediverse search engine, or we are too.

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.

  • SalamanderA
    4·
    2 years ago

    Just read some of the discussion over why this project was stopped.

    the concerns of its usage by trolls has been far greater amongst the community.

    It pains me, because at some level, I think it’s a useful and missing function, however it’s antithetical the values of the fediverse.

    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?

    • Jun Bird@livellosegreto.it
      4·
      2 years ago

      @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.