Search and quote-post are very different in this regard. Quote-post can be a problem because it encourages bad behavior among people who aren't actively malici

Search and quote-post are very different in this regard. Quote-post can be a problem because it encourages bad behavior among people who aren't actively malicious. If the most popular Fediverse software doesn't support it, there won't be a widespread quote-poste -> pile-on phenomenon even if a few servers support it without getting widely blocked. Search becomes a problem when a group of bad actors use it to harass and dox people. It doesn't require widespread adoption, just a small number of bad actors with access to an index. From what I've read about previous organized far-right harassment campaigns, I find it likely that bad actors are already indexing Fediverse posts, but not publicly talking about it. Excluding search features from the most popular software will not help with this. Blocking servers that admit they're indexing posts for search will not help with this.