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oh fucking hell, i was midway typing a reply to someone before I realized this was definitely not good-faith and then I went to their posts/replies and the only interactions they have with this entire instance is shitty techbro sealioning

ah because I still had a lot of local changes I didn't push..

47 files changed, +2,134 −1,044

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let's get to the bottom of this

*points toward camera*

@freci Currently it's completely mixed, but that's also because work is now getting paid to do a hobby project :)

Before that I used a separate 'work' Simple Tab Group addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firef

@bstacey @janl@chaos.social it's also something that has gotten worse over time, where many newer decisions are very clearly prioritizing marketing over privacy

(non)consent, techbros 

is the techbro understanding of consent really just "you didn't say no, even though you weren't aware what I was going to do"

fuck

@janl@chaos.social @aurynn the best practice to follow is opt-**in**. Mastodon does this wrong with the search-indexing setting as well. Create a hashtag for it. . . whatever. Consent is about opting-in. Legally as well, look at the GDPR.

Especially as this is just an 'experiment' having people opting in with your specific hashtag also gives you information if people actually want this.

re: Searchtodon meta, scraping related :boosts_ok_gay:​ 

also for fucks sake

> That said, I think the Mastodon community will have to have to come to terms with “trust they follow me” and delegating that trust to third parties that are fun or useful.

chaos.social/@janl/10967764097

No we fucking don't. We've been posting fine here for YEARS without having to come to terms with that. Figures now that this account is a recent join too.
Why do they always bring the "it's the inevitable future" arguments when **they're the ones making that ""inevitable"" future**

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re: Searchtodon meta, scraping related :boosts_ok_gay:​ 

From chaos.social/@janl/10967715259 and chaos.social/@janl/10967716408 and the kinda evasive responses to mine and others concerns, it seems he's only intent in listening if it's something a [larger part] of "the community" rather not have, so it's worth chiming in on the original thread

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re: Searchtodon meta, scraping related :boosts_ok_gay:​ 

note: the Mastodon "Opt-out of search engine indexing" setting is not a suitable proxy for consent here, it's hidden away in the settings unknown to most users, and it's also wrongly opt-out instead of opt-in.

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re: Searchtodon meta, scraping related :boosts_ok_gay:​ 

His stated goal is to run this as an 'experiment' to 'have this conversation', but in my opinion that could've happened (and was already happening) without publishing a tool, or at the very least making people explicitly **opt-in** to indexing of their toots like this

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Searchtodon meta, scraping related :boosts_ok_gay:​ 

I mentioned these concerns in the announcement thread but wanted to reiterate them here separately. social.pixie.town/@f0x/1096775

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.

@janl@chaos.social Mastodon is larger than Eugen though, and there's actually a sizeable part of the community that also doesn't agree with other (privacy-related) choices Eugen makes, like the Mastodon 4.x hugely exposed client API.

It's good to have a conversation about this with the community, but that goes much better when there isn't a published tool that is (perceived as) an active threat.

Opt-out is not enough, this needs an active opt-in, like a recognizable hashtag in bio.

@tastytea@very.tastytea.de the noindex setting is exposed in the account object as `discoverable` (it's false for both of us), and so is the bio that might contain the opt-out hashtag stuff

@janl@chaos.social Right, I get that you currently have no interest to do so, and I'm inclined to believe you, but this is what it gives you access to, now or in the indefinite future.

Thing is though, Mastodon already has Elasticsearch support, and it's an explicit choice to scope the search functionality to just your own toots, hashtags and posts you've actually interacted with, not just the ones you could've seen passing by.

It's like this because of social reasons, not technical issues that need solving, and that's what all the scraper- and adjacent projects seem to get wrong.

@tastytea@very.tastytea.de robots.txt doesn't make too much sense because afaik it's using the mastodon client api from the logged in user, to keep a searchable copy of everything that passes by in their home timeline, not contacting/scraping any remote instances directly?

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