Fediverse

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

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Google search from every aggregator on the fediverse? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Mintyytea@kbin.social to c/fediverse@kbin.social

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I've heard you can do a google search and append say kbin.social to get results just from kbin, but if I wanted to treat the fediverse's content like reddit's, is there a way to do the google search on just everything that's on the fediverse?

edit:
I've been hearing people will want to make search tools to help us search the fediverse, and in the future even give us options on our servers to opt out of being indexed if we want.

Also this is a search site someone else recommended where you can choose which search engine to search the fediverse: https://fedi-search.com

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[–] Mintyytea@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Omg that sounds great! Thanks, I'm not that familiar with that google search filter and the possibilities we can put :)

Edit: I tried it, but I'm not sure yet, I think it adds a lot of entries I wasn't expecting, but it's still another great option to do the search. I tried it with: < desantis "join Lemmy" OR "powered by kbin" >

[–] CoderKat@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Probably because "join Lemmy" is way too broad and Lemmy sites don't have good page rank scores yet. With any luck, the sites becoming bigger will improve results.

That said, I'm not sure if the page rank algorithm will even work very well on them without changes, since there's so many possible URLs for different instances view of the same post. It likely dilutes the rank of any particular result.

As an aside, even if Google worked well, I suspect it would end up causing the biggest instances to only get bigger. Google gives weight to what other people link to, and that's most likely to be from the largest instances. Also, the whole idea of creating new instances probably doesn't mesh well with how web search works, since it isn't likely to trust new, unfamiliar sites.

[–] Mintyytea@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

so complicated :o that's true, it's kind of another con of making an account on and staying on a small instance then. If the instance makes its own communities, and the instance plans to stay small ish to be a lot of decentralized servers, then the content might not be well searchable for the small instance. idkkkk, it feels like there's pros of the fediverse, but then sometimes it's like a double edged sword or something.