Tootfinder will keep posts for 3 months

2023-04-23

Last week we asked you if Should Tootfinder keep toots longer?. The poll which lasted a week (https://tooting.ch/@buercher/110204927374874941) gave a clear result.

• 17% wanted to stay at 14 days
• 20% wanted to change to 1 month
• 64% wanted to change to 3 months.

Apparently poll results in Mastodon do no add exactly to 100%, but the result is clear. An absolute majority wants to change to 3 months, so we will do it.

Several people added comments to make it even longer

• For me it could be longer than 3 months. Much longer.
• Me too. I don't see why finding old toots should be a problem. I would find it very useful.
• Maybe people could also choose it individually?
• It would be a good idea to leave them for an indefinite time, but allow users to delete their history on demand.

It has been explained already on this blog that Tootfinder is for recent blogs for two reasons, mainly.

• Keeping posts for in finite time creates privacy issues that would have to be handled. I do not think btw that the authors of the post have long term in mind when they are writing. Implementing a system to delete posts individually would involve an interface with login. We already have seen that this will not work, as long Mastodon does not create OAuth authentications with no rights.
• We are not ready to run the server for an infinite archive.