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Should developers build search engines for the fediverse that reflect current community standards?
This is really interesting! I know I say that a lot, but in this case it's very true. It seems like a lot of people are OK with developers building search engines that meet current community standards.
What those community standards are is interesting.
I think at least in part there's a strong commitment to privacy on the fediverse.
In particular, there is an aversion to being aggregated, collated, sorted and classified.
Others engaging with you not based on knowing who you are, or participation in conversation, but because they found you on list somewhere.
The classic example I've seen in discussion here is trolls using search terms to find and harass trans people.
Another norm is defaults. That is, the default configuration should favour community norms, not the needs of the searcher.
Another is ephemerality. That the past is the past; we should let things disappear with time.
There's another one, which might be best characterized as, we said no search, so no fucking search, no matter what, ever.
Like, the voice of the community has spoken, and anyone who tries to reopen the question is being disrespectful of that community.
Anyways, I'm a qualified yes.
When I originally designed the permission system in ActivityPub, I expected to have activities addressed to the Public be available for typical Web use: reading and linking.
I also think republication should be based on licensing, like Creative Commons licenses. Not very well supported now on the fediverse, unfortunately.
People seem to forget who have come to the fediverse from Twitter is that those platforms have republication terms built into their terms of use. Not the case here!
We have 30 years of weird precedent in Web search, like Google, that's found an uneasy and dynamic balance that seems to appease all sides.
Anyway, I think there is a really positive and human-centered concept of search in the fediverse.
I think that we actually have to implement those concepts in order to make them the norm.
If we don't, other ideas of how search will work will be implemented by people who don't, by definition, follow community norms here.
I think it's a lot easier to guide the practices of later entrants if there are working examples of correct behaviour.
Oh, one last thing!
Search is a powerful counterbalance to centralisation.
Being able to use N many different search engines to find references to a hashtag means you don't have to default to a single supernode's use of that hashtag.