I mentioned these concerns in the announcement thread but wanted to reiterate them here separately. https://social.pixie.town/@f0x/109677581893916570

It does a lot of things right, and advertises itself as built with privacy and consent in mind.

However, while a user's search results are limited to content they could've otherwise seen pass by in their home timeline, all these toots are stored and indexed on the central Searchtodon server, indefinitely.

This means he technically has access to the combined timelines of all the users, and unlike public content scrapers **also followers-only and even DM posts** sent by **any user a Searchtodon user is following**.

There's only an opt-*out* mechanism based on setting your profile to be non-search-engine-indexible, or including a few specific hashtags.
Without opting out though **all your toots** will be stored if *any* of your followers use this tool.

While this for now remains just a technical possibility, with him stating he has no intent of misusing it, there is no way to guarantee this now or in the future, or when this data changes hands (sold off or hacked).

A services like this could have merit, but should absolutely be hosted by yourself or your own instance, since it already has control over all this data, meaning there's no extra party to trust.