Is searching keywords in the mastodon app not possible?

@harshil not great

@RebeccaSlatkin You can only search hashtags.

@Ronnie woof

@RebeccaSlatkin It’s something that was done on purpose to keep people from just searching words and then piling on.

@RebeccaSlatkin A matter of perspective and usage, I think 🙂 I’ve not needed to use search once since switching to Mastodon, but then there are certainly people who depend on search a lot.

My understanding is, as @harshil said, historically people on Mastodon are opposed to text search because it can be used to harass and intimidate people. So hashtags usage is encouraged so that things can be found. But that doesn’t always work well since not everybody uses hashtags.

The other suggestion is to favourite/bookmark since you can do full text search on items you’ve favourited/bookmarked (at least on some flavours of Fedi servers). But again, not ideal since you might want to search for things that you haven’t seen.

But then again, I can also see the point of people who don’t want to be searched/found. This is probably going to get worse as more people move over to Mastodon both in terms of asking for full text search and in terms of the possibility of using search offensively increasing …

@RebeccaSlatkin @Ronnie What Apple event?

@f @harshil I understand the reason. It just means mastodon won’t be the twitter replacement I hoped it would be. That’s okay.

@RebeccaSlatkin Mastodon really isn’t a Twitter replacement — not in the sense of being able to get people’s opinions from a large sample of people. I’ve come to accept it.

I used to follow a bunch of tech news sites so that I can get news about breaking tech news on Twitter. None of those accounts are here and I haven’t been able to find replacements. So I generally go without tech news now. Not ideal, but you do what works for you, I guess 🙂

Sure, I could go back to Twitter, but I don’t want to. I like it here. So I’ve decided to adapt to the new environment … Sure would love to find some tech news sources on here though …

@harshil@mastodon.socia

@RebeccaSlatkin we don’t talk about search out loud here. Mastodon is a very friendly place until you question that decision.

@f @RebeccaSlatkin @9to5Mac is here along with their related ~linux, ~android etc properties

Also follow @theverge to get the full Verge feed

This place is extremely dev focused, and as a musician I can't rely on it for anything other than tech news, with a side of journo.

As yet the tapestry of other communities has yet to form.

@samvarma Thank you 🙂 Didn’t know about either one but followed now. It’s good to have some tech news … But yeah, lots of communities are harder to find on here but I’m hopeful that in a couple of years, things will improve.

But then again, when I first joined Mastodon back in 2017 or 2018, things were even more sparse and I don’t think I lasted more than a week. This time around though, things seem different …

@RebeccaSlatkin

@RebeccaSlatkin @f @harshil at the moment you can only search keywords of posts you've faved. There are a bunch of people (including me) who really want a more general search, and I bet there'll be _something_ that works (maybe even an ad-supported external service like Google) for the majority of Mastodon servers within a year.

I still occasionally use logged-out Twitter for the real-time search (eg "is X down") and I long for something similar on Mastodon.

@f @RebeccaSlatkin You are welcome, my brother! Also if there are Twitter accounts you can't live without, you can follow them by searching for @[twitterhandle]@bird.makeup and following. @vincent is a hero for making this, and for even more extra FU points, it is not dependent upon any of Twitter's APIs.

@samvarma Thank you for the tip, much appreciated 🙂Engadget is probably the one account I miss over here and hopefully, this will fix that. Will try it out and thank you @vincent 🙂

@RebeccaSlatkin

@RebeccaSlatkin you can only search for words containing non-breaking spaces.