Long-ish, I know. Please read and boost, anyway.

I asked the 'Verse a couple times, and no one ever responded, so I researched it myself.

#NoBot , #NoSearch , #NoIndex , etc ... these do **NOTHING** to prevent these things from happening, except in a "common courtesy" voluntary way ... and with some instances, manually enforced by proactive #FediAdmins and #Moderators.

**On the contrary**, the self-serving, data-thieving types that are inclined to write personal-data-scraping bots, are literally *more likely* to target folks with those tags in their bios, based on the reasoning that your personal data may be extra-valuable to steal.

Case in point ... there is a @yesbot@seal.cafe bot written (ironically, by some anonymous human) that explicitly searches for bios with the #nobot tag, just to tell people that it thinks (meaning, of course, the anonymous human that wrote it thinks) it is rude to use the #nobot tag, and that they should quit it.

@Gargron and other #MastoDev s ... please consider adding software-based enforcement of these kinds of tags.

Everyone else, keep using 'em, #MastoAdmin s, please require honoring these tags as a rule of your instances.

And everyone, consider blocking the @yesbot@seal.cafe (perhaps the instance it lives on, since the admin there has said they will do nothing about that bot), as well as any other "rude bots" that people identify.

@dt merci! Petite suggestion de respecter ceux qui ont mis #noindex et #nosearch dans leur profile

So... I've seen a number of people with #NoIndex, #NoSearch, and #NoBot in their profiles. I have a vague idea of what those might do, but do they actually work, and which are worth adding? I've been unable to locate any documentation that answers these questions to my satisfaction. #mastodonhelp

@LikeItOrLumpIt
And of course he’s got #nosearch and #noindex on his profile. 🤨

@mentallyalex @DemocracySpot @the_etrain

if a bot is going to scrap you without your consent, why would it respect #NoIndex #NoSearch #NoBots #NoArchive #NoAI

@CrazyMyra @Gargron None of those are your profile or toots. One is someone else's toot mentioning you, the other seems to be an out of date instance, likely before you put #NoSearch

@Edent

What a charming response. He's clearly unfamiliar with the model of consent proposed by @aral
#Techbros #Consent #NoSearch #GitHub

@godber

"I don't want my Mastodon/Fediverse account to show up in these search results, what should I do?

You have these following options:

Place one of the following words in the "Bio" of your account: nosearch, #nosearch, noindex, #noindex"

So your search engine requires explicit action on the part of individuals to be excluded

How many people are going to find and read these instructions once you're underway and have faded into the background?

Your default then is "find everyone"

⚠️ Camel case isn't just for people using screen readers, it's also important for a multicultural fediverse.

For example:

#nosearch means "No Search" in English.

In Spanish means "I don't know Arch".

#Accessibility #Humor #Arch

@atomicpoet Just searched a post I made yesterday on there and it showed up.

I have all of the available common flags for opting out of indexes on my accounts (#noindex, #nobot, #noarchive, #nosearch in bio, and account marked to not be indexed in settings)

Seems like it ignores all of them, and the only opt out they offer is a link to the post privacy section of the Mastodon docs.

Public posts are public, and should be expected to be permanent, but still seems condescending.

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

Wow #creepy

Thank #god its over

>>Searchtodon follows a user’s Mastodon home timeline and creates a full-text index from its posts and boosts. It does not index content from any account marked with noindex, #nobot or #nosearch<<
https://searchtodon.social/

One of my favorite features of mastodon is the automatic post deletion settings. While I understand the desire for searching mentions and personal timelines, this seems to be a problem that is solved by clients?

What is the need for a centralized search service? #nosearch

@doomofthedesert I've just added #nobot and #nosearch to my profile. Regardless of the intention, these things should always be opt-in by default.

@Tattooed_mummy @ianbetteridge It looks pretty good, actually! Not for searching anyone's posts, but just for searching your own timeline: "Searchtodon lets you find (almost) everything* that you have seen before in your home timeline, not just the hashtags ... * Searchtodon respects your followers’ noindex, #nobot & #nosearch flags and does not index their posts.

So the use case seems like just what I experienced: I saw a post, wanted to return to the post, but couldn't find it.

@BluRae If you’re asking about the tag to put in your bio, it’s #nobot and/or #nosearch.

@doomofthedesert

In this case, does "or the tags #nobot or #nosearch on your account description" (from the linked searchtodon page) mean "typed into the text field for your BIO?" I ask because I can't find anything matching this under "ACCOUNT" in the Settings.

In questo periodo vanno di moda i servizi opt-out, perciò...

#searchtodon è un servizio che indicizza i toot e ne consente la ricerca agevole.

Fin qui fantastico.

La cosa seccante è che il servizio è opt-out, potrebbe indicizzare i vostri toot (pubblici) a meno che voi non lo rifiutate espressamente inserendo #nosearch o #nobot nella vostra bio.

Che ne pensate?

Info sull'istanza: https://searchtodon.social

P.S. Grazie ad @doomofthedesert per la segnalazione:
https://mastodon.uno/@doomofthedesert@mastodon.art/109682912930897734

Soooo... there is #searchtodon now which externally indexes toots and makes them searchable.

It's Opt-Out again via the #nobot or #nosearch in your bio, not Opt-In - since we're all so on edge now about this topic consider it a PSA.

This application might not have bad intentions at all but these days I'd rather not, so I will use #nobot. What about you guys?

More info:
https://searchtodon.social/

(Delete&Repost, sorry)

Soooo... there is #searchtodon now which indexes toots in ElasticSearch and makes them searchable.

It's Opt-Out again via the #nobot or #nosearch in your bio, not Opt-In - since we're all so on edge now about this topic consider it a PSA.

This application might not have bad intentions at all but these days I'd rather have my data in as little places as possible so I will opt out. What about you?

More info:
https://searchtodon.social/