GitHub - searxng/searxng: SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.
github.com
SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. - searxng/searxng

All the posts about Reddit blocking everyone except Google and Brave got me thinking: What if SearNGX was federated? I.E. when data is retrieved via a providers API, that data is then federated to all other instances.

It would spread the API load out amongst instances, removing the API bottlenecks that come from search providers.

It would allow for more anonymous search, since users could cycle between instances and get the same results.

Geographic bias would be a thing of the past.

Other than ActivityPub overhead and storage, which could be reduced by federating text-only content, I fail to see any downside.

Thoughts?

  • @catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    2•4 months ago

    So everyone stores a part of the search index? I think you’ve invented a machine-readable website index with extra steps.