Some instances on the Fediverse offer full-text search of statuses (not just self-authored ones), and I'm wondering how to deal with that. I'm tempted to block every instance doing so, because the current expectation of our users is that their statuses will not be full-text searchable by strangers.

Opinions? What should we do with instances offering full-text search for all statuses? #mastoadmin

@rixx Why is that the expectation of chaos.social users?

I'd assume that anything I post on the internet will be able to be found via some search engine, does Mastodon provide some protection against that?

@christianbundy

No protection, in fact the feature is built into mastodon, its just up to the admin if they want to turn it on locally or not.

@rixx

@freemo Could you elaborate where the feature of full-text search for all statuses is a part of Mastodon? The documentation states that their FTS integration supports only logged-in users searching for statuses from their own posts, mentions, and favs. docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/op

That's noticeably differnt from being able to FTS all users' statuses, hence the consideration.

@rixx Sure. All you do is put the following line in your mastodon's .env file and it turns on full-text searching (assuming you also are running the proper services): "ES_ENABLED=true"

Here is the official documentation that explains how to turn off or on this feature: docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/op

@freemo That is the exact part of the documentation I linked, so I'm not sure why you point to this. It states very explicitly that "Mastodonโ€™s full-text search allows logged in users to find results from their own toots, their favourites, and their mentions. It deliberately does not allow searching for arbitrary strings in the entire database."

@rixx ahh i see what you mean now.. notice you can also search for mentions.. .I think this explains the confusion. When i search i **do** get other peoples statuses but only if they mention me (I see that now).

What server do you know of offers full text search of all statuses? As far as i know if a instance allows full text search it is this feature they are enabling... are there any servers that have some hack to this feature?

@freemo Since your instance states that it offers FTS, and you have repeated this claim as including all statuses, I had to assume (for the sake of our users) that you were doing what you said you were doing.

@rixx When did I publicly claim it included all statuses? I just double checked our about page and all it says is i enabled the FTS feature... I dont think I ever publicly made the claim it included other posts until a few minutes ago, w3hich was an error on my part.

Also to be fair what could have also avoided it is if even a **single** person had just asked me about it.

@freemo You stated to me, just a couple of minutes ago, that you did FTS, erroneously, so I'm correcting the assumption.

@rixx ahh yes, that was in error a few minutes ago. But that is also the first tie I made that claim publicly (as I was mistaken as to what FTS feature did exactly)...

Im more concerned with your statement that the recent drama around qoto was my fault for stating something I never said publicly (aside from a few minutes ago where I clearly made a mistake).

@freemo I did *not* say that "the recent drama around qoto was your fault". Assigning blame does not further the conversation. Pretending others assigned blame doesn't help, either.

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@rixx I'll try a bit harder in the future to be aware of your sensabilities. Just let me know if i ever make you uncomfortable and ill try harder to avoid those behaviors. Sorry again, very unintentional that I upset you.

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