@tfb my point is not that public posts aren’t public—i browse the federated timeline often enough to be well aware of that fact—but that part of the function of hashtags and guppe groups invite interaction from a specific group of users (people who browse that tag or follow that group). a group repeatedly interacting over time is a basic prerequisite for community building, so its important to note when a feature facilitates that
so if global fulltext search is implemented (which it currently is not in 99.9% of instances, to be clear) i’m arguing that it would undermine the community building processes of our current discovery methods and that downside is worth balancing against the net gains of increased discoverability
@tfb also not addressed in my post but since you brought it up, i do think its worth noting that i have so far seen zero evidence of people assuming public posts are not public or needing to be educated about the fact that random people might stumble across their posts. it is true some new people don’t know they have a choice about posting privacy and that may impact their behavior somewhat?
but like, for many people their first experience is making a post that reads ‘hi im new’ and getting several responses from absolute strangers welcoming them to fedi (i know because im often one of those strangers!) and also because i see a lot of ‘oh wow i just joined and everyone’s so friendly here????’ posts
