@ricmac @tchambers Hashtags are a terrible hack to work around a lack of reasonable search functionality.

They clutter up posts, it’s easy to forget to use them, you frequently have to post using multiple conceptually-identical hashtags, you frequently have to search multiple conceptually-identical hashtags, etc.

If people want more privacy controls to control search visibility, we should just implement them in a thoughtful way. Not pretend half-baked search is actually good.

@ricmac

And that is why Mastodon is stuck at 15 million accounts, only a fraction of which are active in any meaningful sense.

The lack of search functionality, blocked by a purist ideology held by another fraction of the user population, may be elegant (in the nerdy Linux sense) but it is an architectural form of pre-crime censorship and control, which has had clear and obvious effects on the “community” and on these so-called “conversations,” turning Mastodon into a fast-moving river.

@ricmac I guess it depends on your primary reason for using social media (any social media). In my case, I mostly use it to share interesting articles and other things I find, and in that case, I absolutely want those posts distributed as far as possible, and to be able to be found by as many people as possible, for as long as possible.

I seldom use it to have actual conversations with people, but if you do, then I can kind of see your point. But in that case, I'd rather recommend that you enable automatic post deletion after a certain period of time. I know how frustrating it can be when someone interacts with a reply I wrote like six months ago. For those, I think they should become redundant after a few days, max.

Now, what would be really nice is if you could set post deletion on a case-by-case basis. Then I'd have most of my posts never expire, but my replies to controversial debates and things expire after three days. :-)

@ricmac @Researchbuzz This is outdated or misinformed. Mastodon has had full text search capabilities for quite some time now.