@laurenshof
Yes, some fair questions about the opt-out nature of the approach, since most instances enable indexable by default. That's a valid concern and it's really an instance-level decision, not ours. But the heated pushback mostly came from one person.

With https://discover.holos.social we may have highlighted that many Fediverse users don't pay attention to their default settings. We built a fully respectful search engine that only relies on #ActivityPub, with instant deletion, updates, and indexing only consenting users. We will likely shut down the service, but the source code will remain available as we believe the approach is ethical. That same indexable setting already lets Google index your posts and keep them cached long after deletion.