This was brought up in the NormConf Slack the other day. There, an article was mentioned about the cultural reasons why Mastodon’s search works the way it does (https://midrange.tedium.co/issues/how-mastodon-search-works/).<p>TL;DR Mastodon is a reaction to Twitter and has different norms for engagement. Maybe global search is incompatible with that.<p>As an experiment I implemented a simple Google CSE that uses a domain list of all known English Mastodon instances as listed on https://instances.social but it doesn’t seem to work very well: https://searchmastodon.social<p>What does HN think?
>Mastodon is a reaction to Twitter<p>I disagree to a large extent - it's nominally Twitteresque...but with a very different audience in mind (mostly hypertechies or artsy folks, so far as I ever saw)<p>There's also a <i>big</i> push towards self-hosting in the Mastodoniverse/Fediverse (though, admittedly, self-hosting it was extremely painful the last time I tried, and most users <i>don't</i> self-host (though many talk about wanting to))<p>Global search is an interesting idea ... but it really requires that you be fully federated with every other instance - or that you do it externally through some kind of aggregatable tool like your example of Google across known instances<p>But when you get into the idea of "global search", you need to define what you mean. Do you mean every toot on every instance that has the hashtag "#hackernews" (on the easy end of the spectrum)?<p>Do you mean finding the "same" user on every instance on which [s]he has an account (exceptionally difficult - especially since user handles aren't universal (though [almost] universally <i>referencable</i>, there is no guarantee that "@ricklamers" is the <i>same</i> user on every instance)?<p>One the one hand, being able to find "everything" about a topic could be really interesting<p>On the other ... some communities/instances are less-federated, more isolated (whether by design or accident), and may not <i>want</i> what they post to be as "findable" as other communities/instances<p>Maybe that's solvable by making toots visible to the fediverse, instance, or followers only ... but it's definitely something to keep in mind
From the linked article:<p>>Because it spent its first half-decade as a tool for those who were looking specifically for an alternative to the more toxic elements of Twitter, that led to some important decisions around its ultimate design.<p>I have found it ... interesting ... that while Mastodon started as a way to avoid "the more toxic elements of Twitter", it has instead, if you wander a little away from "mainstream" instances turned into an <i>incredibly</i> toxic cesspool of the worst of humanity<p>Sure, there are also examples of, possibly, near the best of humanity - but the dregs seem to pop up far more than the shining stars