Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things....
Where did you read that Mastodon is merging with Meta? If you’re talking about Threads being launched, I am pretty sure that all the drama was about whether any Fediverse/ActivityPub instance, whether it be Mastodon, Misskey, Firefish, would federate with Threads. Even Lemmy instances like Beehaw could choose to federate with Threads, but probably the compatibility would not be great.
That said, I do think it’s important to find an instance with federation policies that match what you’re looking for. If Beehaw wants to isolate itself and be its own thing in order to protect its users, I’m sure many people will appreciate that, perhaps even you! I’m on the fence whether that’s what I’m looking for, myself.
Okay, your explanation makes sense. I still don’t think saying that Mastodon would merge with Meta is even close to correct, as there are a lot of other instances besides mastodon.social and mastodon.online, but I at least understand the sentiment now.
FWIW I left Mastodon shortly after I tried it because I have the opposite opinion of you; he didn’t implement search fast enough! I actually liked Twitter before that one guy took over. But I also understand those that are looking for a quieter, more private place.
Google has a bad reputation for killing its own products, to be sure. This is a part of Search, though, so I think less likely to die. If the results are terrible, and users don't click on them, I bet you are right!
I've read several people complain over the last year or so that Google's results have been getting worse and they add site:reddit.com or similar to improve the results. I use a search engine called Kagi that includes a "lens" to see forum results only which is neat. I wonder if this is Google's attempted answer.
Beehaw on Lemmy: The long-term conundrum of staying here
Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things....
How to Move from Mastodon to Firefish (wedistribute.org)
Google Perspectives Search (blog.google)