You know who's already indexing Mastodon posts?
Google.
You know who I wouldn't like to see gain a foothold into the Fediverse?
Google.
So how do we stop them doing that when I assume it would require all instances to do this. ?
I can see how it would be useful though, and as more content is here, then people will find posts on here easier and may join as a result.
To effectively do so I think you'll have to make it only possible to do so with consent. Which ... I dunno. It's a complex problem to allow federation and block undesired access.
So can some of the decentralised search engines do that e.g SearcX ?
@zleap It's possible. Someone has to build it.
@atomicpoet @zleap - I tried at new year and got my face chewn off - too much effort so I shut down the project....a lot of the hate explicitly mentioned "who does he think he is.... google?", unfortunately the populous at large "trust" them more than a small startup, and the OG mastodonians with an idea of tech will fight tooth and nail to shut down anyone they can bully :/
@zleap Some people want to be indexed. So you can't exactly stop it from happening.
We might want to build better search services that are specifically opt-in and honours consent.