Screenshotting this post 👇🏻 in order to quote post it! I don’t know where people get the idea that quote posting = dunks, personally I feel that that opinion is just Twitter brain.
Every major social platform from Tumblr, to Facebook, to LinkedIn and more has the ability to natively quote post. This is because the primary use of such a feature is to amplify information w added context or to open a new line of discussion. Replies are used far more often for harassment but we don’t ban replies!
Personally, I’d like to have quote posts as an option. I think it would be crucial to allow people to opt out of the feature, but I do think quote posts could allow for a lot of really great and thoughtful, nuanced convos on here that are currently too hard to have in the comments (and the way things are now replies are closer to a comment section). I really love Mastodon, but it would be great to see the platform experiment more (again, while giving ppl the easy and clear option of opting out!)
@mttaggart@taylorlorenz I think you are knocking in open doors. The debate is now closed and quote posts are on the Mastodon road map. If more people chipped in a couple of bucks in support each month, new features would be added faster. https://patreon.com/mastodon #Mastodon
@mttaggart@taylorlorenz Yeah, want to have quote posts, too.
What sometimes happened on xitter - people used quote posts when a reply would have been much more reasonable. This seemed to happen more often with those who were chasing followers.
Not a reason to avoid quote posts, though.
Maybe some “readers suggest this should have been a reply” :)
@wigbert@richlv@maggiejk@IceCubesApp aware of what? The only thing Ice Cubes does is embed the status when there is a status URL. It saves you a click. The other clients will still see a link.
@richlv@maggiejk Many third-party clients do it. Basically they recognize that you're sharing a link to a Mastodon post, and then display that post's content — but it's one-way, so there's no way to see the QTs of a post from that post.
It's a great stopgap, but the official feature is going to have some ActivityPub integration, and will probably end up having granular permissions associated with it.
@accretionist@DarkestKale@taylorlorenz and I just mean search within the platform, I absolutely opted out of web crawlers reading my stuff and putting it up for Google search.
@DarkestKale@accretionist@taylorlorenz That’s true but with quote posting at least you get notification that someone is talking about you. Without it people would just do screenshots and then you would never know.
@taylorlorenz can you describe what exactly makes a “quote post” for you? There’s a tiny bit of friction associated with tooting a link to another toot, but it’s not difficult. Given that you’re willing to go to the trouble of screenshotting, why not just post a link, as you might post a link to anything else? Many clients and some servers will unfurl a link preview and embed the toot already, and as others have pointed out, UX improvements like a native button for doing this are already planned
@taylorlorenz I just wish QTs would basically be a form of a subtoot + self-retoot including the link of the original toot.
This in combination with restricting subtoots would allow us to have QTs while also giving us:
an easy opt-out
the QT would embed itself in the original discussion,
thus the OP is notified of it, and
"their" community can interact or defend OP if necessary
Otherwise we end up with two disconnect strands of discussion, one that could turn into abuse, gain traction and then possibly spill over/become abusive with brigading.
@taylorlorenz as I mentioned from the other account, a big chunk of the fediverse already allows it! But mastodon doesn't do a great job showing those quotes/reblogs
As a reminder, if you absolutely cannot wait for quote posts to happen, and you must quote post right now, here's your options:
Alternatives to Mastodon (Mastodon is not the only game in town, there are alternatives, which the press doesn't seem to give much attention to): Friendica, Misskey/Firefish/iceshrimp/Catodon, Akkoma
@taylorlorenz the other major social platform that doesn’t have quote posts is Instagram.
(And quote posts on Facebook are broken in that if you try to quote-post a quote-post or a post with a link it works as though you quote-posted the quoted post and leaves out the post you actually quote-posted)
@taylorlorenz one thing about quote posts vs replies is it’s an explicit turn from conversation to broadcast. Not trying to put a judgment on that — and as you point out replies are a massive abuse vector — it does noticeably shift how people use a service. It’s probably the biggest difference I’ve noticed between, say, Mastodon and Bluesky and I often wonder if that accounts for the people who settled on each.
@taylorlorenz I think part of the point is screenshots are harder to get back to easily, and you can't go back and forth. That's what she's saying, it makes the dialogue harder
@taylorlorenz Quote posts work pretty well in different apps like @IceCubesApp. Of course an official implementation would be better, but it works well enough that if quotes are important to you, it’s absolutely usable.
The decision against quote posts was the single dumbest decision in the design of Mastodon/The Fediverse.
The few possibilities of abuse (all of them can still be achieved by other means, e.g. screenshotting and tagging) are far outweighed by the enormous benefits for proper discourse.
@mina
When Eugen started the development he thought that it was a good idea (you can use share and other ways). Now he announced that Mastodon will include quote...
@mina@taylorlorenz You mean #Mastodon only. You can quote using Pleroma and its forks and Misskey and its (hard / soft) forks, probably also in Friendica. Only the CEO and lead developer of the #Mastodon network makes the decision of no quotes for the #Mastodon network but not the #fediverse.
@mina Welcome. No, it is not a restriction of the ActivityPup protocol, it was / is a decision of Eugen for Mastodon. And as Mastodon is everywhere in the media, people think Mastodon would be the fediverse. We asked round 2018 Eugen when he will implement cool things like quotes or custom reactions (more then the star in Mastodon) and so on. His answer was no, I asked him 2023 again and the answer was, he will think about it or something. Why, because the idea of Mastodon is a alternative thing to Twitter (nobody say it should be better).
Try a firefish account or fork (there is at the moment a ongoing discussion about forks of the project). AFAIK firefish is able to move existing posts from Mastodon.
Might be pragmatic to take a raincheck on the Firefish fork and mothership while they work out their issues. Or at least get up to speed with them first.
@stuart@taylorlorenz@mina Earlier or later you run in this problem, in all projects. Firefish works and we will see how it goes on. In the meantime.
This instance runs also using firefish so, there is no need to join the so called flagship instances. You see how Mastodon fails on their flagship instance with moderation and spam.
I blocked in December 3 accounts for our instance for promoting pornographic content as we have minors here. Thats a job they have to do and not others.
@mina It was more then CW´s, the messages where sent from new registered accounts to round 20+ accounts at the same time as DM´s including links to „only fans“ pages.
@taylorlorenz@caseyliss So much pushback about quote-posts seems to come from folks who can’t fathom a non-dunking-on use case, but there many. My big two are:
I have something to say, but I don’t want anyone to see my comment without the context of what I’m responding to, or
I want to share something, but in the spirit of “retweets aren’t endorsements,” I don’t want anyone to see that I shared it without the context of my comment.
@joshua No real news, we are still thinking on the best way for this to work on the protocol (ActivityPub) level, and are discussing it with a few other AP implementers. We expect to be able to show some work in the coming months. It will also depend if we manage to get funding for the feature (we applied for some EU programs) @taylorlorenz@caseyliss
So mastodon doesn't do quoted posts. | think |
understand the goal of avoiding that feature.
People have decided that "dunking" is the
overriding usage of quoting and that we should
avoid the inherent toxicity.
But quoted posts are also the foundation of
true discourse in a medium like this. It is the
primary way to start new conversation that is
an offshoot of an existing conversation rather
than a direct response.
I'm finding it hard to do that on here. And the
result is | just don't post.
(2/2)
(You can use the Edit feature to add the alt text to the image so people who use screen screens to access the fediverse can also experience it.)
@aral
I too notice the absence of this functionality, it would be nice if we could find some way to implement it without it being abused! @taylorlorenz
@taylorlorenz Easier said than done. The numbers of developer working on this project is very low. I don't think Mastodon will implement this in the near future.
If dunking is a feared use of the feature, design the presentation of the quote post so that the quoted item is shown first, followed by the quoter’s response.
That would reduce the ability of the quoter to prime the way the reader initially views (and interprets) the quoted content, while working just fine as a fork or clarification of the original quoted post.
@taylorlorenz While I certainly don’t wish to be all “whatabout…”, it strikes me that you’re talking about Mastodon being harder to use, while screengrabbing a text post and not including any alt-text, thereby ignoring a well known accessibility tool that makes it easier for a huge swathe of people to use Mastodon.
Quote posting is a useful feature to have. I use quotation marks sometimes, but they're not the best solution. The fact is that any feature can be abused with enough ill-will. That's no excuse not to have it.
@taylorlorenz The Mastodon team is working on it but they want people to be able to have some control over being QP'ed and it's tricky. They'll get there.
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