• rabber@lemmy.caOP
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    1 day ago

    But what about all instances?

    2 is solvable if this search is possible.

    What brought me to make this post was how do I simply find the answer to “best lemmy app android”?

    I know how to find the answer but it would be nice to search all lemmy instances with such generic questions.

    Is there a possibility of site:instance1|instance2|instance3 or similar? Maybe site:*lemmy* [question at hand]

    Obviously that’s pseudocode but I hope it helps understand what I’m asking.

    If at all possible if you could run this in incognito container it would be even better. You never know if a blocked user posted something valuable lol

    • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 day ago

      You might try searxng, though due to the way federation works, that’s not really necessary. All you need to do is search one of the more federated instances like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml or lemmy.sdf.org and you will pull up anything that server has seen related to your search. User blocks aren’t really an issue, since you don’t need to be logged in. The only time searching multiple instances would be helpful is if you know the post originally might have come from an instance that doesn’t widely federate or is heavily blocked from federation.

      Also I’ve seen quite a few folks from lemmy.ca so you might try your instance’s own search. It will usually search federated content as well as local content.

      The main issue though is like @CameronDev@programming.dev suggested. Lemmy is young, it doesn’t have nearly 20 years of back archives that you can search nor the huge user base that Reddit had to create such a rich back archive. It’s getting there, but it is a problem only time and usage of Lemmy will solve.

      As for the best Lemmy app, You might give Voyager a go. I use it on iOS and have been quite happy with it.

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      rust (site:programming.dev | site:lemmy.world)

      That seemed to work, I guess you could keep appending instances?

      Its just google, so no user specific impact.