This no free text #search thing is interesting and disappointing.
If you want a toot to be findable, gotta tag it with search terms. But salience is hard to figure out up front. And the friction of that is frustrating.
I've seen the argument against free text search: it can be too easily used for pitchfork mobs and other bad behavior.
But it does feel extreme. Kindle search (PDF search) vs. manually generated, haphazard book indexes.
@mainzebra Yeah. Really stinks and is probably the biggest detractor from discoverability, esp. without an algorithm to recommend content. If I want to see X I have to hope the people who talk about X have put "#X!!" in their posts, or else nothing. I get that harassment sucks but it's pretty scorched earth and I don't know if the trade-off is worth it.
@mainzebra I think the majority of toots by most people are okay to be searchable - a per toot switch to turn off search would be sufficient. Regardless, although Twitter's search did lead to harassment people would be able to circumvent it if they wanted to prevent people coming from search (e.g. "tr*mp"). Would just be nice to provide some more agency in finding discussions on topics.
@INTERPUNCT no idea about "majority" or what the default setting should be, but with you in principle