@StevenSaus That's a good way to put it.

To actually answer your question about the rogue search engine problem, authorized fetch can help with that to some extent. You'd also have to stop showing posts on the version of people's profiles shown over http, though. Then in order to be indexed posts would have to get to the server via ActivityPub. A lot of servers show their federated timeline publicly, though, so it's not something an instance could just change locally and expect its own users to be protected.

But robots.txt has been considered "good enough" for the web. We just want the equivalent of that, which is so far not at all what instances like Universeodon have implemented that got them blocked. Their view was "if it's public and federated to us we can make it searchable by our users" without any regard for the signaling mechanisms that already existed like #noindex and the option to list your profile in search engines.

@walruslifestyle Again, appreciate your POV and I'll be thinking about what you said. Especially the #noindex and #nobot aspect, partially because of what it means and partially because the code could check for that and ignore hashtags in those cases.

Additionally, I've reached out via email to my own instance admins to share what I'm doing and ask for their feedback / guidance. I know that many of the instance admins communicate so perhaps a broader perspective from them will help. Cheers!

Some common Fediverse "opt-out" tags, to go in your profile:

#NoBot - no interactions / scraping by bot accounts

#NoSearch / #NoIndex - do not include my posts in search engines

#NoLimit - you do what you want and you do it with pride

#NoOdles - elongated dough-based food

#NotAm - the afternoon

#NoNoNoNoNoYes - you are Jim Trott

It's been a while, but it is time for Yet Another Completely Unprofessional Unboxing with this little point of contention for many gamers. 🤘😊 #ttrpg #ttrpgs #rifts #noindex
https://youtu.be/o0P8ut-ypJg

@technoid_ same. :blobunamused:​

#RemoveMyContentFromSearchEngines #noIndex