Some people are saying "I need to be able to search for all posts on here that contain a word." Folks, there is not just one "on here"—that's what federation means.
@CodingItWrong every server has a cache of all the posts it knows of, doesn't it? What's different about indexing them as opposed to if they originated from it?
@Amikke "all the posts it knows of" != "all the posts on here (on the fediverse)"
@CodingItWrong sure, but it's better than "can't do it lol", especially since often you want to search a post you already know of but didn't save it somehow or saw it somewhere else.
Also you can make an engine independent from a single instance that indexes all servers it can find, there was a project like that not long ago that got shut down because some people got pissy that they don't want their public posts to be public.
@Amikke You're saying "you can do *something* like that person was asking", and I understand that. I was saying "you can't do exactly what this person is asking."