Corrected link https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/09/mastodon-4.2/
Lots of small improvements across the user experience, and opt-in search, make this an important release. New iOS app release with it as well.
A useless platform until they implement quote tweets. It’s been years. What is taking them so long?
Mastodon's Search updates are a huge boost for the platform.
I'm still sorting out what's been added and changed, but:
- People can now opt in to full-text search (this is disabled by default), through user preferences.
- There are apparently search modifiers, though I'm trying to track down the full sequence. "from:me <search terms>" will turn up your own content on specific terms.
I've long found that whether or not a platform has an effective search capability has a huge impact on how useful I find it. Hacker News's search (by Algolia) is a big draw of this site. The lack of effective search on services such as Ello (RIP, apparently), Diaspora, and Reddit (text posts are searchable, comments are not) played a large part in my ultimate dissatisfaction with those tools.