By default, all posts show up in search results on #PieFed, #Lemmy and #Kbin. But in a first for the threadverse, PieFed has just added some privacy features that Mastodon had for a long time – being searchable is now optional!
Un-tick the “My posts appear in search results” checkbox in your settings and not only will your posts be hidden from the PieFed search on your instance, but on all other PieFed instances too (yes, it federates, but only to PieFed instances).
But wait, there’s more. Google will not add your profile or any of your posts to it’s index (because of the <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> tag used when rendering your posts) AND comments you made on other people’s posts won’t be indexed by Google either (because of the
So if you’re tired of living in a fishbowl, want a bit of privacy or would rather people can’t follow you around, PieFed is here for you.
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Oh cool!
Will the meta tag federate to other Piefed instances and, more importantly, to Lemmy/Kbin? I guess the posts (and even possibly profile) might still appear on Google as seen through a lemmy instance?
Yes, you’re right. Not much we can do about that except provide a way for people to block all instances of whole types of software (e.g. ‘block all lemmy instances’) which will only make sense if PieFed was 1000x bigger than it is now.
Search visibility is not difficult to implement (set a boolean flag on posts, based on the author’s setting), I expect other platforms will do it eventually.
These are good features but I would be very careful calling any of this privacy. You can call it “limiting discoverability” and emphasize that it relies on parties (whether google or kbin) to play ball. In essence the posts are still public, can still be found, can still be linked to but are just not as discoverable as other posts.
