Micro.blog doesn’t have full search or hashtags by design, and I know it can be frustrating sometimes. I hear it. But this report on child abuse material across Mastodon instances is part of why:
During its search, the team found 554 pieces of content that matched hashtags or keywords often used by child sexual abuse groups online
Until moderation and automatic flagging can be deployed at scale, it’s better to go slowly.
@manton That’s alarming. As for Micro.blog, what about offering search on profiles instead? Coupled with tabs for types of posts maybe?
@moonmehta Good idea. Not sure why we hadn't considered profile search yet. That would be really handy.
@manton I guess this confuses me a bit. I would think that people trafficking in CSAM are trying to stay hidden and not be discovered? In terms of the community building aspect of micro.blog isn't openess and discoverablity a positive? Especially if it's opt-in? It may be that I've thought far too little about what the open web is but my admittedly very basic understanding is that the point is, well, to be open, to ease discovery, conversation and sharing.
Also, and I could be wrong about this, it's my understanding that when CSAM searches are done isn't the hash that's being searched something else entirely? Something that's embedded in the images and not the hashtags used for easing discoverablitiy that we see with social networks?
@manton Yes! And for those of us who have two or more blogs added as feed sources, it would effectively provide a search across them all!
Relatedly, what do you think of the Timeline option to "Show posts but no replies" being a tab on a profile? Or just simply separating Posts and Replies like Threads and some others do?
@manton @moonmehta Absolutely profile search. To be honest, I thought that was understood to be a part of the discussion in terms of what we mean when we discuss search here. Posts too but certainly profile search for those that want it.
@jabel @avjay
On micro.blog, you have absolutely no incentive to flex, shitpost, self-promote, or troll. You’re there to post interesting things and/or chat with people. Nothing else makes sense.
Well said, Alan. 👏🏼
@Denny I don't think openness and discovery are that tightly linked. The open web is about letting anyone publish, owning your identity, and limiting centralized control. To me it's not really about discovery or making it easier to reach an audience.
@Denny @moonmehta I don't think I've heard profile search discussed recently. If it has been, I may have just missed it! Definitely lots of assumptions that it's good to cut through with specifics.
@moonmehta Yeah, I mostly like how other platforms often split replies and posts. I think this could be an app feature, if not something baked in everywhere.
@Denny Let me take a step back and rephrase my other reply... Openness can unlock discovery. For example, Google search exists because content is not locked in silos. But it's a separate layer.
@Denny here they mean that they can use hashtags to find content that’s posted, not image hashes. Groups often use badly coded language (think old spy movie “the crow appears at midnight”) so that you’re unlikely to find it unless you know what to look for, but when you do, it’s discoverable. Security through obscurity for the sake of discovery by those in the know.
@jsonbecker Oh, I see where things are confusing... When @moonmehta said "search on profiles" I interpreted that as "search a specific user's posts", not "search the whole platform for matches on a profile".
@manton yeah at least for me, I think that it’s less “search this person’s posts” which seems fine, but more “find people I may want to follow” that is the larger area people want to have some mechanism, especially for onboarding. Bios/profiles feel like safe data to index and search without encouraging post-level hashtag trash for a little discoverability.
@manton To be clear, just in case, I meant searching within posts and replies on profiles only while browsing them. 🙂
@jsonbecker Thanks for the clarificaton. I'd gone and read through the Standford article too which helped. Perhaps unfortunate that the term "hash" is used in a similar context of searching and identifying but in each context it's different.
@manton Thanks for the clarification! And now I think I'll just muddy it up more. 😉
I think another word that might be helpful in these sorts of discussions is accessible. It's easy to get lost in the mulple layers of meanings of the words. I guess I'd been thinking of the open web in terms of the many possible meanings. Open in terms of providing access, of lowering the barriers to participate. And I suppose in my thinking that's the full process of communicating, which is to say, writing and reading. Along these lines over the years I've often seen the web referred to as a "democratizing" force, something that agains speaks to openess and sharing.
I'm embracing the openess of the open web. 🤓
@manton I suppose you're inspired by Apple's policy of leaving the world in a better state than it was before, IOW be a force of good. The child abuse issue shows there's more than enough reason to be cautious and persistent in the aim to improve.
