this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2023
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@rysiek (though if you'd like to argue that search/spidering requires opt-in consent in all cases, I'm happy to hear that argument)
I don't have to defend my right to decide how stuff I put out there can be used. Whoever wants to scrape my toots has to explain why they want to do so, and get my consent first.
And "well it's publicly available so it's fair game" is not enough of an argument. Just as "she was wearing a short skirt" is not consent to sexual advances.
@rysiek I was not talking precisely about scraping toots, I was asking whether you consider Google, Bing, etc uses of opt-out web spiders to be unethical, but fair enough. (Also, not interested in defending OP given the clarification that he is talking about searching the fediverse.)
I think search engines indexing plain old websites (blogs etc) are an importantly different case.
The nature of the medium in blogs/news websites/etc is way more public and way less intimate (in general…) than social media. Social media blur the line between private and public conversations, for better or worse.
Social media is like having a conversation in a public cafe; websites/blogs is more like publishing a newspaper or standing on the corner of a street shouting your message at strangers.
Making a public archive of newspapers or recording a person shouting at strangers is one thing. Recording semi-private conversations in a cafe is a whole different thing. Does that make sense?
@rysiek yeah, that's the sort of distinction I was looking for. thanks!
@rysiek @f00fc7c8 The benefit model is different between the two too.
A blog's author benefits (in some small way) from being indexed, because it helps drive traffic to the content they're publishing for others to read.
The same can not really be said of toots and it's relatively rare that it leads to positive contributions to an ongoing conversation.