@ianbetteridge On individual basis, understandable, but also not viable as a service business model.
Thus that leads to one of only two possible outcomes:
- ad-funded service, with all the downsides we've grown to expect of that model
- information exclusivity to only those who subscribe to a premium service
Well, realistically, we'll see both. Most of fedi has already been indexed by any number of private data plays, while a standardized opt-in model will make it politically acceptable to open an ad-funded search engine. Perhaps Google - but I'd hope for someone else, just for competition's sake.