It would be nice with a search engine made with decentralization in mind.
Like the internet is decentralized but the good search engines are at centralised companies like Google etc.

  • F00FC7C8 likes to infodump@libranet.de
    1·
    2 years ago

    @anders There would need to be a way for that search engine to collect data that is both possible to contribute to as an individual, and doesn’t unintentionally DDoS sites it indexes, and that’s the challenge I think. Spiders collect a LOT of data. Right now the closest thing we have to decentralized search, is metasearch engines like Searx, which query and cache results from all the major search providers that run their own spiders.

    • rysiek@szmer.info
      5·
      2 years ago

      The bigger issue is consent. People on fediverse feel very strongly about consent, and search engines tend to just ignore it. Better do some serious research into consent to search on fedi before embarking on designing a search engine for fedi.

          • rysiek@szmer.info
            4·
            2 years ago

            I don’t have to defend my right to decide how stuff I put out there can be used. Whoever wants to scrape my toots has to explain why they want to do so, and get my consent first.

            And “well it’s publicly available so it’s fair game” is not enough of an argument. Just as “she was wearing a short skirt” is not consent to sexual advances.

            • anova (she/they/it)@beehaw.org
              3·
              2 years ago

              It physically hurts to know that consent it such a controversial topic in tech circles, and it breaks my heart to hear people argue we give consent to invasive data practices just by existing on the internet. I’ve spent my entire life being taught by technology educators that I should expect everything I post online to be publicly accessible forever, and nobody every stopped to ask why.

              • rysiek@szmer.info
                3·
                2 years ago

                I am one of those technology educators, and today I would still warn people that “Internet does not forget”, and that they need to be careful what they put out there.

                That doesn’t mean we should not demand explanation from people who make it so, and that we should not demand them to ask for consent and respect our refusal to give it. I really appreciate how fedi culturally puts this front-and-center. I hope it continues to do so, and that this way of thinking spreads farther!

                I agree that consent should not be a controversial topic. Regardless of how much it inconveniences techbros trying to “disrupt” yet another area of human endeavor.

            • F00FC7C8 likes to infodump@libranet.de
              3·
              2 years ago

              @rysiek I was not talking precisely about scraping toots, I was asking whether you consider Google, Bing, etc uses of opt-out web spiders to be unethical, but fair enough. (Also, not interested in defending OP given the clarification that he is talking about searching the fediverse.)

              • rysiek@szmer.info
                4·
                2 years ago

                I think search engines indexing plain old websites (blogs etc) are an importantly different case.

                The nature of the medium in blogs/news websites/etc is way more public and way less intimate (in general…) than social media. Social media blur the line between private and public conversations, for better or worse.

                Social media is like having a conversation in a public cafe; websites/blogs is more like publishing a newspaper or standing on the corner of a street shouting your message at strangers.

                Making a public archive of newspapers or recording a person shouting at strangers is one thing. Recording semi-private conversations in a cafe is a whole different thing. Does that make sense?