Note: This is not a discussion of specific restricted works or deleted accounts.

Two issues with the current mass shadowban (restrictions of unknown thousands of pages from onsite search results if you don’t know what that means) are

(1) we don’t know how long it will last as Support isn’t answering questions about (re)indexing after going to “no payments”, and

(2) we lose the tools tied in with the search feature.

This topic is about the second point because of the first.

When questioning the “AI” use of an indexed project that’s found in a collection or social feed, I could enter the title and go between search filters. That’s how I would figure out if the project was marked “no-ai” if there’s not a tag or content note about it.

Almost nothing I’ve looked at this past week is indexed. Not even today. (No, these are works that were against Itch.io’s terms of service.)

So is there another method we can use? A URL trick, or something else technical? I mean something tied to the dashboard question, which is quicker than asking as comments and waiting for a response that might never be given.

I know there are creators and players/readers who are giving up on Itch.io because of recent decisions and failures in communications. Too amazing resources, zines, books, and games not as readily available anywhere else are buried here. I’m not doing leaving quite yet. Still, this is the last week when I can focus on finding stuff for the next few months.