@lutindiscret
We panicked quickly because things escalated beyond what we expected. But we still believe our approach was far more respectful than what's already happening: the same data is being exploited by others without users even knowing. At worst, we raised awareness.

@apps the things that concerned me at the time were, in the initial announcement, 'we follow every signal' but only in this post did we know what signals you were following; and language of 'people may have misunderstood the defaults' which unfortunately rhymes with what less conscientious organisations say to justify hoovering all the things

if i had known the list of things you were looking at, i would have simply checked them and slept well. i didn't, so i blocked the bot, which now proves to have been unnecessary

@lexinova
We can't change how Mastodon presents those settings, but we had a page explaining how the service works and how to opt out per platform. We'll communicate even more clearly if the service comes back.

Worth noting that this opt-in by default setting also allows Google to index fediverse profiles, except they don't check for consent at all. This is a much bigger issue that goes way beyond our project, which actually tries to do things the right way.

With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts. Every deletion, edit or block was processed instantly via #ActivityPub.
Google uses that same "indexable" flag but ignores everything else, keeps deleted content cached for weeks.
We shut it down after pushback. Was that the right call? Don't hesitate to share, this concerns the whole Fediverse.

With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts. Every deletion, edit or block was processed instantly via #ActivityPub.
Google uses that same "indexable" flag but ignores everything else, keeps deleted content cached for weeks.
We shut it down after pushback. Was that the right call? Don't hesitate to share, this concerns the whole Fediverse.

@apps

So this dead horse flinched again

"With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts."

I'll copy-pasta with only slight edits:

My entire point (all the noise notwithstanding) focused on

Default opt-in versus default opt-out

This is an agent --> recipient transaction

Default opt-in: the recipient is opted into (and receives) the agent's action whether the recipient --> knows of <-- the action or not

Default opt-out: the recipient is opted out of (and cannot receive) the action whether the recipient --> knows of <-- the action or not

Neither default opt-in nor default opt-out have any logical meaning if

--> THE RECIPIENT DOES NOT KNOW OF THE AGENT <--

in advance

There was no mechanism for prior notification *before* indexing

People would have had to stumble on what you're doing, by how, exactly?

How dose the recipient learn of what you've done *before* you do it?

@FinchHaven @apps so you would like to be asked everytime a search engine wants to index your profile? That's like the cookie popups, I will just stop reading them at some point.

@shadowwwind

This is the old, worn out Fediverse "Well anybody can search the Internet any time they want to so why do you care?"

Which 1) most people cannot, lacking the technical expertise, and 2) most people don't want to have happen to them anyway

<snip>

cc @apps

@FinchHaven @apps huh, that's not what I meant

The way I understood you, is that opt-in and opt-out don't work because the user doesn't know what service wants to do what with their profile.
Which to me sounded like you want to get a notification and decide manually everytime a service wants to index your profile. Did I get that wrong?

@shadowwwind

"The way I understood you, is that opt-in and opt-out don't work because the user doesn't know what service wants to do what with their profile."

My point was, the user doesn't even *know* the service exists when they''ve been opted-in and weird stuff starts happening

"Why are these people suddenly Liking and Boosting and Replying to my posts? I don't Follow them, they don't Follow me, they didn't use any hashtags I Follow and yet they're popping up in my Home Feed?"

They're already *using* a service you've been opted in to, without your knowing you've been opted in because you had no clue the service existed until *after* weird stuff happens in your Home feed

It's happened before

Byron Miller (supernovae @ Universeodon) and his famous reply "Well, in the four months of having (our) full-text search we haven't heard from anyone who has suffered personal harm because of our search."

That was good to know, anyway

BTW the link to that quote 404s because Byron left for Bluesky

cc @apps

@shadowwwind

"Which to me sounded like you want to get a notification and decide manually everytime a service wants to index your profile."

No. That won't work if I don't know what the service is and that it exists in the first place

The real point is that historically this has happened before, over the years, because people get opted-in to something they've never heard of, by default

"Which to me sounded like you want to get a notification and decide manually everytime a service wants to index your profile."

It's funny you mention this because Ryan "Bridgy" Barrett initially said he was going to send Mastodon people DMs which people (myself included) pointed out would not work, because most people have their DMs locked down

Again, here: https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/880#issue-2136207725

cc @apps

@lutindiscret
We panicked quickly because things escalated beyond what we expected. But we still believe our approach was far more respectful than what's already happening: the same data is being exploited by others without users even knowing. At worst, we raised awareness.

@apps the issue of #nobot #noindex, it's the fact it's opt-out

and people are fedup of opt out and want opt in

@lexinova @apps

you opted-in by making your posts public