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GlitchCat Policy on Global Fulltext Search :do_boost:

By default, Mastodon only allows fulltext searching on posts that a user has interacted with.

Some instances have recently decided to remove that limitation. This document comprises our policy with respect to those instances.

github.com/GlitchCatFedi/Polic

Fully agree with GlitchCat’s reasoning (see above) for silencing instances which enable global fulltext search. however the doc primarily focuses on the detrimental effects of global fulltext and i’s like to additionally suggest that intentional discovery methods (eg guppe groups, hashtags) tend to actually be more effective for community formation than fulltext search because they’re explicitly opt in

for example, by adding a particular tag, i’m indicating that i expect regular readers of said tag to see said post and potentially respond. an equivalent post surfaced via global fulltext search doesn’t contain that same implicit invitation

ultimately, i’m unlikely to be seriously effected by any implementation of global fulltext — almost all my posts are locked to followers only and the ones that aren’t are often already intentionally hashtagged with the relevant tags (for the reasons outlined above)

but i still want to think that we are building a good thing here, and that means supporting better policies even when i’m not personally effected

@Lady I'm curious how you apply this to all the fediverse instances out there that aren't Mastodon and have fulltext search by default.

@effy the same way (insofar as we federate with them, which, for the most part we don’t)

obviously i’m not manually checking the source code for every single instance we interact with, but this is a good baseline rule for any instance which is receiving a large number of our posts, and something to fall back on if we ever encounter any problems

@Lady@glitch.cat.family @effy@social.effy.space

the same way (insofar as we federate with them, which, for the most part we don’t)
Most platforms that aren't mastodon have full text search though. You will be federating with a lot more full text search instances already.

@ada @effy right, my point is that the number of non-mastodon instances who actually follow our users is slim (and single-user ones already are exempt)

i have no qualms about silencing large non-mastodon instances with full text search; we believe it to be an antipattern which escalates conflict and results in context collapse

if the instance is small and doesn't follow our users, it is probably beneath our concern

Mentions of violent transphobia 

@Lady@glitch.cat.family @effy@social.effy.space I guess this whole dialogue concerns me. I'm a trans woman. I've had my content accessed by bad faith actors when it federated to their instances. My content federated to them, and they were accessing my selfies, still circle jerking with each other as they joked about me killing myself, as they wished me death, calling me a paedophile etc. Most of their comments stayed local to their own instance, so I wasn't even aware of it when it happened, but it still happened. It was still there. And if one person hadn't have replied to me directly and let the post leave their instance I would never have known about it.

Even after we blocked the instance, my content still made its way to them, and some of my posts continued to get comments like that.

And disabling search, even defederating and silencing people doesn't completely stop it from happening.

I'm also a trans woman that is running an instance that has full text search out of the box. There's not even an option to turn it off.

It just strikes me silencing instances that allow full text search isn't going to achieve what you're trying to achieve here. The bad faith actors are still going to go on doing what they're doing, and genuine instances risk getting caught if they raise flags.

I personally think that enabling authorised fetch is the approach to take. It will stop content federating to the bad faith actors at all. Unfortunately, it's reactive, so it doesn't do anything until you block the instance, but still, it stops the content getting to bad faith actors more than this will.

@Chronotope it is my understanding that patches exist in PR #2 and #3 here: github.com/VyrCossont/mastodon

see this previous discussion in glitch-soc (closed without merging) for more interested parties: github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon

and of course it has come up various other times in the past as well. i’m trying not to be too harsh on any specific instances for wanting this, while still setting a firm boundary desired by our users.

@Lady Ok, interesting. Good to know. I was just trying to figure out what the concerns were here and understand the changes involved. I see @vyr as the person leading the changes and I think they have some reasonable reasons to do so, but I understand why an instance might want to react the way yours has as well.

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📟🐱 GlitchCat

A small, community‐oriented Mastodon‐compatible Fediverse (GlitchSoc) instance managed as a joint venture between the cat and KIBI families.