FOSSDLE PieFedMastodon is working to add the controversial 'quote posts' feature | TechCrunch
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Lee Duna
techcrunch.com/2025/02/14/mastodon-is-working-t…
It’s a good feature that’s only controversial because it was used on a shitty platform
It was part of what made the platform shitty...
Anti Commercial-AI license
As others have already pointed out, you can literally get the same result by using images as quotes. People could've been shitty even without the quotation feature because it's not the feature on the platform that makes it shitty, it's the people on the platform who decide to use it for a shitty purpose.
Not implementing a feature because morons may abuse it is not justification for not implementing a feature. It's like saying we shouldn't be able to reply to comments because someone might use that feature to directly send you hateful comments. Now, if the features primary purpose is (or primary use case ends up being) to use it negatively, then sure it shouldn't be implemented. But I don't see how quotation falls under this exception. In my eyes quotation is a net positive.
It doesn't turn the platform shitty and if there are good moderators it also prevents assholes from trying to turn the platform shitty.
Good. I get why they were originally resistant to it, but fringe, outlier situations can be dealt with when you have actual mods maintaining things. The reason quote-retweeting was used so heavily for bullying on Twitter was because there were no repercussions for it, and Twitter never enforced their bullying rules for the practice. Mastodon instances have their own mods enforcing their own rules, to a *much* better degree than Twitter ever has. While the potential for bullying still exists, it's far easier to mitigate on Mastodon.
I'm so confused. How would quoting someone's words bully them? Maybe I'm not getting something. You're talking like I say something on mastodon, you quote what I said, with me attributed to the quote, and that bullys me? Or am I missing something? I feel like I'm missing something.
*(This is an example.)*
Get a load of this idiot! They can't imagine how quoting someone can be bullying!
Haha, what a bozo! Now we're going to relentlessly shit-talk them in this sub-thread that OP has no ability to moderate nor stem the flow of vitriol from.
*(Further continuing the example.)*
Omg howd you do that without a quote feature remove images from mastodon
The quote isnt bullying at all. Its your own post using words like idiot ect. Thats abusing which again has nothing to do with the post below it. A mundane version of that post wouldnt be as controversial and most likely be roundly ignored.
Might as well just remove the ability of people to post. That will fix it
You have to think of it from a micro blogging perspective. Imagine I have a ton of followers and have created a culture of them attacking anyone I attack. It makes more sense how it is bullying in that context.
Edit: Also, to be clear, I'm not arguing against this feature, just explaining how it can be used for bullying.
Again, it's the attacking which is the simple rule breaking and it's regardless of how. Good god talk about over analysis.
Break it more than once and account suspended.
Aren't Mastodon instances maintained by volunteers in their spare time? I can't imagine how they manage to continue moderating it once there are ten thousand or millions of users on it. At least the moderators on Twitter were paid. It was their job. I think people massively underestimate how much work this is.
Most instances will stop allowing new accounts to be created when it reaches a certain size that gets difficult to manage (hardware and moderating-wise). They self-regulate that way, and instances that get out of control will just be defederated by the others.
That's true, but I don't think we'll see that sort of rapid growth on Mastodon. At least not for a while. For now, Bluesky is sucking up most of the users seeking Twitter alternatives. I imagine that the growth will be slow enough that it'll be easy enough for mod teams to scale up to.
Also mastodon instances not named mastodon.social are still relatively small.
I'm glad they're adding it; I also hope that they take Bsky's ability to detach yourself from the quoted post too.
They will have that it’s in the article
Good feature, I don't see any problems.
Quotes are controversial because Twitter people used it to foster toxicity. However, on Mastodon, we have actually active mods. Ideally, you should be self-hosting your own instance anyways and be your own mod.
Also, it seems very well implemented, much better than on Twitter: *Mastodon says it will allow users to control whether their posts can be quoted. Also, users will be notified if someone quotes them, and they’ll be able to withdraw their post from the quoted context at any time.*
Most importantly, Mastodon has an active developer who responds to feedback, and PULL REQUESTS, ISSUE TRACKERS, AND GITHUB DISCUSSIONS exist!
If you still completely disagree with this decision, fork the project, create a patch, and start your own server with the patched Mastodon!
I'm curious about how they handle retracting the quote in an open source federated model where the behaviour of other instances can't be ensured. Does the instance hosting the quote simply refuse to honour the quote link?
And I suppose if an instance uses a hostile workaround like simply embedding a copy, that would be seen as a bad mark against the instance which could lead to defederation?
I'm not saying it's impossible, just interested in the specifics.
Bluesky has a feature where you can stop someone from quoting your post if you don’t like what they are saying.
Yeah, but how effective is it really?
As much as I love the Fediverse, it's amazing that Mastodon users see this feature as a threat. By the way, any decent app implemented quoting years ago.
Okay, I get that they're gonna add something that allows your posts not to be quoted, but what's stopping me from just screenshoting a toot from someone that doesn't wanna be quoted and adding that image to a toot of my own and using it as a quoted toot? Besides the effort of course.
Nothing, but the effort might be one the driving forces of how one uses social media. And thus how it's communities begin to operate and feel.
That could make possible the repost on Lemmy and that's a big deal!
Today to repost, you boost and you can't add anything else to the original toot like the mention of a lemmy community to allow fediversion of the content. This new feature might make it possible. I can't wait!
Images of text? Accessibility.
So, another sacrifice at the altar of social media to deliberately break a straightforward feature at the expense of people who need accessibility. - ableism +1 - accessibility 0
Social media can be such trash.
Atleast mastodon supports image descriptions pretty well, so it would be possible to make the posted screenshot accessible.
Possible, *unlikely*, *worse*. The most accessible content is native text with the full content structure of the original. Quoting without compromises & feeble games would be better.
What's wrong with quote posts?
quote dunking I guess?
If I infer from context clues, quote dunking is commenting disparagingly to frame the quoted tweet? I left Twitter in like 2011.
I've never heard the phrase but I'm 10000% positive that's what it means.
Then we can finally get people to write
Is that the controversial part?
Submit feedback and pull requests to improve the feature to make it much less controversial.
Can someone please tell me what a quote post is? Maybe I'm blind but I don't see an explanation for what it actually is anywhere.
It's like a repost, but it lets you add your own post to it and shows the original post as a quote bubble.
So like this?
Or like this?
Wow, stop being so controversial
X does it more like the second one, but there’s nothing stopping mastodon from doing it like the first.
Is it just that it links back to the original or what? I mean how is it different from just quoting the post like this:
And then saying something about it?
The bubble would be the actual post itself, you know? Like having the full post within another post. Similar to what you just showed but clicking the bubble brings to to the original post.
Right. I guess I just don't understand the use case since I'm used to comment trees (like here on Lemmy) and you're never confused about what someone is replying to since the comment being replied to is always just right above.
It's used in the context of a micro-blogging platform where your feed consists of individual posts that *don't* show the whole comment thread. If I replied to a post on mastodon, my followers only see my post on their timeline unless they click on my post to see it's context. A quote post can be used to present someone else's post to your followers, with whatever you want to say about it.
It's a good way to be pedantic on social media.
I'm shocked people are actually against Mastodon adding a common feature. Seems like one of the gripes with it for ages has been the lack of features and polish (I personally stopped using Mastodon in part because of this)
Glad they are going ahead with it...it doesn't really hurt anything and isn't any different than just screenshotting posts.
you can just translate the app though?
sorry, had to
It seems the solution is to allow a user to choose whether to be quote-posted, perhaps down to a post-level.
That has implementation hurdles, I’m sure, but I think we should try to build it right this time.
That's literally what they're doing:
Oh, well then that’s good. Yay Mastodon!
I think you'd need a little more than that to make sure the restriction isn't used defensively by harassers (one of the reasons people ask for this is to show others bad behavior in their replies). But it does feel like a solvable problem.
And Mastodon having more active moderation (since you can proactively look for an instance that meets your moderation expectations) also means the stuff that can't be handled mechanically can be managed.
Much needed feature
Other fediverse platforms have had it for awhile. Not sure why so many feel so stuck with Mastodon. There are alternatives.
at first i was again it, but there's no action on mastodn, it's a very slow closed system, and quote toots might open it up
90% of interesting tweets are quote tweets they lead to the twitter version of chainthreads
Finally, I can make the meme "Who private quote retooted me?"!!!
based
RIP mastodon