It seems @Gargron (creator & founder of Mastodon) has embraced the idea of universal search upon Mastodon, which is excellent as search by hashtag is (more or less) a subpar experience.
It is my decision to unite all discovery features in one setting, because all of this stuff is an expected part of a social network and splitting it up into different settings that everyone has to opt-into one by one just to get the same behaviour they get by default on other social media seems like a bad user experience. Also,
Eugen Rochko on GitHubdiscoverableis already a federated attribute.
Eugen plans on adding search modifiers, which should make it easier for folks to find content based upon images, videos, polls, languages, sensitivity (for the not-safe-for-work crowd), etcetera, which will improve Mastodon & make it a competitive alternative to future rivals like Threads (who is promising to add search soon).
I believe that Misskey has a similar feature, which makes discovering content so much easier as not everyone uses hashtags (the latter, which can appear spammy).
Before privacy folks freak out about having the history of their posts exposed to random strangers on the Fediverse, Eugen has assured folks that this will be an opt-in feature.
Discoverable is false by default (i.e. opt-in). The hint on the option says: “Allow your account to be discovered by strangers through recommendations, trends and other features”.
Eugen Rochko on GitHub
In the future, we could witness a universal Fediverse search engine for opt-in posts, which could search across the entire Fediverse & return relevant results.
Unfortunately, Google & Meta are probably working on a universal Fediverse search engine, although it would be great to have an alternative built & funded by Fedi citizens themselves.
Discovered via: @rolle on Mastodon
Image Credit: Charles R. Knight on National GeoGraphic
