Hey everyone,

This isn’t an announcement, just wanted peoples thoughts on this.

I think everyone knows searching the fediverse can be better. Googling doesn’t work too well, etc. So I wanted to do my part and help out.

Indexing all posts, etc is quite a lot to handle, so I wanted to start small and just focus on video search. I’ve started indexing videos from Peertube and other video websites. (Even YouTube but this could be removed to just focus on independent sites)

I know Peertube has their own search engine for videos. I will be reaching out to them. Compared to my site I’m planning it’ll have other video sources and be easier to use.

So that leads to feedback from you guys.

  • What do you think about indexing videos posted on the fediverse and other independent platforms?
  • Are there similar services?
  • Am I just wasting my time?
  • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.socialEnglish
    84·
    11 months ago

    As the fediverse is almost exclusively run by volunteers that are paying server bills and being admins, I could see some larger instances not taking kindly to this, especially depending on how much stress it would be putting on some already at capacity servers.

    • loobkoob@kbin.social
      15·
      11 months ago

      Ideally, OP’s crawlers will just come from their own instance that other instance owners can defederate from if they want to opt out.

        • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          That’s a good idea. Listen to public data being broadcasted out, then you aren’t worrying people with scraping or anything. It would only be from go live onward, but you would just be listening to the protocol.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      How much bandwidth do you suppose a crawler would use? I’d guess very little