I’ve seen a number of posts mention it, but none of them links to an explanation.
Out of the loop: WTF is Eugen?
Eugen Rochko is the creator of Mastodon.
My first thought.
I think at least some of it is due to his acceptance of Meta’s Threads (should they ever get around to federating). He see’s it as an opportunity, a lot of others see it as letting the wolf through the door.
Note: I’m not arguing either side, I’m just saying that I think that’s what the issue is.
I read a toot about it last night when I was very tired. Apparently there is some sort of (anti-)privacy protocol in universeodon’s source code that is getting implemented to Masto main source soon.
I wasn’t able to find the relevant post, but I do remember that it can only be disabled by toggling ‘Discoverable’ under account options. Evidently Eugen said something along the lines of “it’s what people expect from social media” but the point of Mastodon was to be a divergence from traditional social media, no?
I think I was able to found the GitHub PR related to this. I think it is a feature so people can search for toots if they turn on “Discoverable”. It is now locked before it “devolves into another search feature debate.”