Fediverse is like email
Fediverse is like email
It would be nice with a search engine made with decentralization in mind.
Like the internet is decentralized but the good search engines are at centralised companies like Google etc.
Fediverse is like e-mail Therefore it needs a search engine
What.
Or exposure to harassment, including offline. Or context collapse. Or…
In the end, adding search would change the space dramatically, especially any privacy-related expectations. And there are about 2mln people who are using fedi with current set of expectations. There are hundreds of thousands who had been using it with this set of expectations for years. Waltzing in and bulldozing these expectations is just not a good idea.
So yeah, don't do search on fedi unless you do some deep research about consent.
No thanks - that would harm the fediverse by allowing a lot of targeted trolling.
I had a thought about a week ago about search engines. I think it may be better to move towards a curated-list style of search, instead of an automated indexing one. Think Pinterest, but with a greater emphasis on websites, people, and communities instead of just images.
That way search can be made more human. You can get to know and trust the individuals who curate content, and maybe donate to them if their efforts are valuable to you.
Is it really that good? I think I tried it some years ago and it wasn't really a satisfying experience.
Something like this exists for peertube already, I didn't look at their code but one might be able to fork it to work with other platforms.
@XpeeN
Yeah I saw that. Great tool.
@anders There would need to be a way for that search engine to collect data that is both possible to contribute to as an individual, and doesn't unintentionally DDoS sites it indexes, and that's the challenge I think. Spiders collect a LOT of data. Right now the closest thing we have to decentralized search, is metasearch engines like Searx, which query and cache results from all the major search providers that run their own spiders.
The bigger issue is consent. People on fediverse feel very strongly about consent, and search engines tend to just ignore it. Better do some serious research into consent to search on fedi before embarking on designing a search engine for fedi.
@rysiek I don't think Anders is asking about a search engine for the fediverse, this sounds more like a federated or P2P Google/DuckDuckGo replacement.