Bringing this highly requested feature to #Mastodon and the fediverse is not as trivial as some might think, but quote posts are coming. Here is our latest write-up about our progress:

blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/…

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

I love it, but can you also focus on fetching replies from other servers so Mastodon can actually be contextually aware?

There's even a pull request.
github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p…

reshared this

in reply to The Tattooed Nonna 👑

@Tattooed_Mummy @konkrit
Is also worth keeping in mind that one can also turn off boosts by individual users, so while boosting is nice, it’s not a ‘foolproof’ way to get followers to see something. Same as if they do not follow the original poster, that will not see your replies to them.

But boosting a post with commentary is a great way to ensure fillers will not only see the post but your thoughts as well

1/2

Georgiana Brummell reshared this.

in reply to Alien_Sunset

@Tattooed_Mummy @konkrit
One of my favorite ways to use it is to boost art and my thoughts on how it makes me feel and why i like it, rather than contextless reposting.

Another use is when the post inspired thoughts that are only tangentially related, or long and rambling, that might not really fit in the op’s replies, but you want to include the op for context.

in reply to Alien_Sunset

@Alien_Sunset Apologies, but I'll do a very meta thing here by only posting a link in response to the last point you've made: mastodon.social/@konkrit/11400…


@martinschlegel fair point! I'd argue though that this is possible already by linking to the original post, with which then users will have to engage in a more substantial way. Again, for me this is a design problem that necessitates that comments on something are being put above what they comment on.
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit

but if the post you are making is not 100% related but only referencing the quoted post for context, the reader then has to navigate BACK to your post to be able to continue the conversation.

i know of many people that get very annoyed when people create tangents in their replies that aren't strictly related to their posts, muddying the conversational waters and blowing up their mentions with stuff they don't care about. this is a way to keep that from happening.

in reply to Alien_Sunset

@Alien_Sunset This is a fair point, of course! But if it's already too inconvenient for me to simply click once in order to be able to engage in a conversation, is it really that important to me in the first place? Like I get that people want convenience, I too want convenience, but what I think the great takeaway from 20 years of increasingly convenient social media platforms is that too much convenience leads to too much engagement, i.e. a lot of noise and very little signal.
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@Alien_Sunset I mean, we like Mastodon precisely because it's not an engagement factory, the sort of winner takes all platform where the one with the biggest case of Main Character Syndrome is right by being louder than everyone else, don't we? And that's my concern, that this features will contribute to it becoming that way because that's how it played out on Twitter.
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit

I mean yeah, it’s not an engagement factory, so why are you annoyed someone moving the (likely unrelated) conversation away from your post?

but seriously, if i didn’t want to be able to have conversations with my friends about things we are interested in, i would just go into the field out back and yell at the stars. Is it so wrong to want to make things a little easier for me and my friends to chat and connect?

in reply to The Tattooed Nonna 👑

@Tattooed_Mummy @konkrit
And, like, that’s your prerogative, I don’t think I’d like to follow someone that does nothing but quote posts either, but I don’t really think that’s going to be its main use case, more than likely (at least for the people i follow) it will continue to be as how they already post with links but with quotes and therefore that much more convenient for all of us
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

The lack of a quoting feature is part of the reason that we can't attract many black people, because they are using quotes to keep themselves safe.

You and I may not need or want it, but they do.

The fediverse is far too white, so we should cater to their needs.

Edit: Here's a thread by a renowned black scholar on the subject: zirk.us/@shengokai/10934702727…

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to el Celio 🇪🇺 🇺🇦

@elCelio @konkrit @barometz I guess that depends on whether this includes non-American black people? I'm not an expert on the matter, so I don't know how bad the racism is there. However, since social media are international, I expect it to be bad for everyone who isn't white as a bed sheet like me.
in reply to GunChleoc

@gunchleoc @konkrit @barometz

I'm asking because I read some posts that the feature is very useful for the Black community, but these posts come only from accounts part of, or related to, the African American community.

So, it may be that this feature that will be implemented will be useful in the American culture, but may be harmful to people of other cultures and countries (which is what I experienced).

in reply to GunChleoc

@elCelio @konkrit @barometz
The only thing one can do is make a risk assessment and mitigate the potential harms, and it sounds like the Mastodon team is taking their time and collecting lots of feedback for their implementation, e.g. their plan is that you can disallow being quoted in your profile, or unhook your post from a quote.
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit "I have zero understanding for why people would want it."

That surprises me. "We have learned that many groups use Quote Posts as their primary means to build consensus and community on other platforms. Quote Posts used in this way convey trust and respect for the original post, building on or enhancing an original idea."

Even if that's not been your experience, surely you can understand that others' has been different. (Mine included, for what it's worth.)

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit In the end, the argument is that there are communities that want this, even though you are not a member of any of them. And the devs are bending over backwards to give both those communities and you what they want.

For what it's worth, I very often quote-post someone whose post introduces a subject that I want to comment further on. (Or I did, back when I was on the Hellsite.)

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit @mike yeah, I second this - often, the thing that people (think they) want, may not be the best way to go.

Think about it, if you ask anyone, they will say they want lower taxes. But then if everyone's taxes were lowered, the roads would be filled with potholes etc.

People are (generally) really bad at assessing the deeper consequences of their desires, when implemented.

So, I'm with Kristoffer on this. Though I think many will opt out of it altogether, and I am hopeful because of that, it won't harm our communities all that much 🙏🏼

in reply to bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵

@bazkie @konkrit Your tax examples is apposite. But as the blogpost shows, a LOT of thought has gone into this. It's not as though the developers just went "Oh, some people like QTs, better add them".

Anyway, we're unlikely to agree on whether they might the right choice, but I hope we can at least agree that they have moved slowly, carefully and sensitively ... in the direction you didn't want.

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit @mike People want this feature because they want to quote, rather than reply. In order words, they don't want to engage in two way conversation they want a one sided monologue.

The only people who want this feature are those who used this feature on X / Twitter, who then migrated to Mastodon because want an alternative to X / Twitter, as long as that alternative is exactly the same as X / Twitter.

The whole purpose of quotes is not to reply. It serves no other function.

in reply to Rastal

@Rastal @konkrit @mike I don't use quote posts as a way to not reply, I use them as a way to explain why I'm sharing it, to add my experience, to say how much I appreciate it. As it stands, even though Mastodon is my last remaining social media platform, I feel like I'm not part of it. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing! But now I'm wondering, am I just doing it wrong? (genuine question) Is there a difference in technique that explains why some of us want quote posts while others say they aren't necessary? I completely get your concerns about them being misused.
in reply to Mike Taylor 🦕

If this is in reference to my original post, I hope it came across that my point wasn't "I don't like this, so no-one should have it," and rather "I don't think this will benefit the community as a whole." Personally, I don't want to take anything away from anyone and do not criticise anyone for wanting or using it. My concern is that this will contribute to the development of the sort of winner-takes-all mode of communication that we've seen unfold on Twitter, etc.
This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit @mike The demographics of #Mastodon - and the #Fediverse - are not particularly diverse, and mostly reflect white Europeans and North Americans (with the main exception being Japanese #Misskey users).

This is not good, and if we can change our underlying technology (*) to make Mastodon attractive to people outside of these groups, then in my opinion we should do so. The revolution will not be successful if it is not global.

(*) Of course, we also need to implement _cultural_ changes to make the Fediverse more attractive to non-white demographics - there is only so much that technology on its own can do.

in reply to Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸

@konkrit E.g. I'd like to point to this chaos.social/@slothrop/1140128… and say "Vi trenger en debatt om norsk medlemskap i EU NÅ ! " @qmike@sauropods.win


Timothy Snyder, Historian:

“I'm in Munich and people keep asking me to decode Vance's speech. OK: In Vance English "free speech" means "Let Musk run your elections" and
"democracy" means "let Russia run your elections." Now move on. 2025 is about what Europeans do, not what Americans say.

(Reposted with alt text)

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

Automating quote posting allows adding **Context** to blindly Boosting somebody else's Post/Boost. It's like ALT text for Boosts.

It will allow ME to add Content Warning wrappers around other people's posts that didn't, reducing Boost spammage.

I currently hate Following on Mastodon because it conflates Network spread via Boost with "I want to explain somebody's post". I can't separate the two.

Also, manual copy-pasting linkage is Luddite. Drove the Journalists away.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit @mike@sauropods.win if you care in good faith there here’s some sources privacy.thenexus.today/black-t…

absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2022/…

techpolicy.press/the-whiteness…

in reply to sotolf

@sotolf @mike @konkrit @barometz for the limiting/retracting to work, your server needs to implement this.

But this whole discussion/proposal is somewhat miss guided, since this only can limit the new native quote toots, while nothing can stop anyone from just linking to toots, like we all do now.
This tries to enforce something, that can only work if people play nice.

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit that's client visual implementation detail. No need to have the added view on top. The point is to give context to why something is being shared, or additional commentary.

The reason why it's commonly 'on top' is that it's often easier to understand the post if you know the context/reason-shared, before viewing the post.

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit are you sure? The way it is proposed seems quite reasonable to me. You don't want to be quoted? You prohibit it. You wanted tour toot to be quotable and later some misuse happened, which you disliked you withdraw it. I think it will be a very positive feature for exchange of ideas. And general moderation and federation rules will apply...
in reply to Martin Schlegel

@martinschlegel I see all that. But the more people, especially public figures, come on here, the tougher moderation will become. In the long run, I believe it could have similar effects like on Twitter before.

Regarding your second point: You can always post a response directly, why is that not enough? You see, the thing that I think is so poisoneous about quote-posting is that it diverts attention away from an original statement and that this is not exactly constructive for debate in my view.

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit this is not twitter, you can follow people on servers with reallly high amounts of characters per post, wanting to highlight which part you are responding or referring to is sometimes really important. When I quote scientific papers I don't like include the full plain text of the whole paper either. I quote the relevant part and enough information so that people can go, look it up and verify me.
in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit The point is: Quote posting already happens in certain clients, and in the worst possible, most harassing way. As I see it the Mastdon team isn't really adding a new feature. They "simply" try to regulate a feature that's known to be harmful.

If this effort succeeds and client authors replace their abusable implementations of quote posts with the official mechanism, you'll simply opt-out from quote posts and you'll be as safe as anyone could be.

in reply to Mathias Hasselmann

@taschenorakel I wasn't aware of this, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. But then I'm asking myself, if that is really the goal here, why not communicate it clearly? "Hey, we're seeing this happening in harmful ways, so here's a tool with which you can protect yourself" is an infinitely better PR pitch imho.
in reply to Mathias Hasselmann

@taschenorakel @konkrit
so if you opt-out, you won't be quote-posted, but you still will see quote posts from others, and they get attention: I don't think the harassing behaviour would diminish much.

But anyway good thing that the devs thought about some limitations to the negative effect of this feature.

Glass half full.

in reply to el Celio 🇪🇺 🇺🇦

That's really the point: Quote-posting happens anyway. By some Fediverse clients that already offer it in their UI, by people who simply share screenshots.

Therefore I really just see this as an effort to guide baseline behavior in the network: By offering a convenient, but somewhat safe version most people might be too lazy to practice malicious quote-posting.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mathias Hasselmann

@taschenorakel @konkrit
yes I know there are ways around (i.e. screenshots and others), but they require some effort.

A lot of quote posting I saw and see in other platforms don't even require such an extra effort, which means there are a lot more around. And most of them are negative quote-posts.

As I said, good to see that they thought of some safeguards (but I'll continue to prefer a boost-reply environment that a quote posts one).

in reply to el Celio 🇪🇺 🇺🇦

@elCelio @konkrit Well, as a politically active person and member of our community council I don't have the privilege to boost-reply everything I see.

Bad wording, controversial reasoning in a otherwise sane post will cast a bad light on my community, my supporters, me.

I would greatly benefit from the ability to comment controversial content when boosting.

Still I absolutely share your opinion that each reply to a post shall be visible to any legit reader of thread.

@MastodonEngineering

in reply to Kristoffer Patrick Cornils

@konkrit What you are missing is that users can already post links to toots and have them displayed as quote posts without any of the proposed protections that the Mastodon team proposes to implement. Anyone is free to write a Fediverse client and users like that feature. However, if this feature (with the limitations on quote posting without consent) is implemented, I expect that clients will no longer display links to toots as quote posts, because it will be redundant and hide the distinction, so we'll be better off than we are now.
in reply to JP

the main "technically trivial, profound social-cultural consequences" decision i am concerned about with quotes is whether quoter's text appears above or below quote.
in my opinion - i wish i had some studies handy to back this up - text-above (eg how twitter did it) overwhelmingly contributes to "dunk" culture problems that i have not seen on text-below platforms (tumblr, cohost). it influences both how and *what* people quote. please consider making text-below the default.
in reply to bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵

I agree, my experience with text-below quoting platforms has been *much* more positive than text-above.

It's certainly possible that's not a real root cause of the cultural difference. But given that Mastodon et al. can make a choice here, it seems prudent that they are picking the format associated with less harm.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

in reply to crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts

@crossgolf_rebel How can you disallow a post on one of those other server softwares to be quoted? Can you disallow it only for selected audiences? Do you even get a notification when someone quotes you? I very much guess not. Because it’s just a dirty hack without considering any social implications.
in reply to crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts

@crossgolf_rebel That’s not the point. Even Twitter’s implementation of quote tweets with notification for the quoted account was better thought out than simply "client renders a linked post in-line". This isn’t sustainable with a growing network and lots of bad actors. Your constant crusade against Mastodon is perplexingly childish.
in reply to crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts

@crossgolf_rebel @frumble This mechanism kind of works for tiny networks. It doesn't work for greater networks: Greater networks attract a bigger number of people who try to harass and threaten other people. The #Fediverse simply will fail, if it fails to protect its users.

Therefore I hope that this initiative results in a well discussed, widely accepted proposal, which also gets adopted by the early implementers of similar features.

We need the Fediverse to succeed!

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Flock of Cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🎄

@FlockOfCats @lazysupper Some portion of trolls and harassers are also just lazy, and won't type out someone's username, let alone find a specific post, if they can't just tap on it and get there right away. It's not foolproof, but it adds friction to toxicity.
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

Interesting. I appreciate that Mastodon will allow users control how their toots can quoted.

One extra enhancement I would love is being able to choose whether my timeline shows quoted toots. When they land, I'll give them a try. But, I'm really quite happy not having quote toots on Mastodon. I enjoy seeing original content in my timeline, I'm not a fan of the idea of seeing a ton of one-liner quote reactions added to it.

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

I understand the listed challenges. I think I come down on a different side but I'm not absolutely sure. I think of it all like, what if Elon joins Mastodon. If people want to roast him by quote-posting, it'll be really easy for that to be made impossible, so we don't really have quote-posting except by people who agree with each other. So now we have a new way for echo chambers to form. But it's complex and it's surely a start.
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

☝️ Very interesting and informative article on Quote Posting. Key points:

"In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:
-You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all.
-You will be notified when someone quotes you.
-You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time."

#QuotePost

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

reshared this

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

finally I can use post from others to my benefit without benefiting them. That's important. You don't want to share to help others gain momentum, you want that momentum yourself with their content.

No but serious for a second, why implement it at all? What about misskey and other instances? Will they be able to prevent quoting? It's playing with fire but for what benefit?

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

Shannon Prickett reshared this.

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

my biggest concern about quote-posts is: what about quote-posting a quote post? How ill it be rendered? When you show a quote-post, you must show the quote with the comment or the comment itself won't make sense for lack of context. If the quote post is about a quote post you must also show the quoted post, quoted content to have the whole context, etc. What's your design about that?

cc @Claire

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

I'd rather we have something like the ability to share a post but with a pointer to a reply. So it looks like a QP but only to your followers. To everyone else, it is a reply. And this means it stays attached but subservient to the OP.

I'd also like to see all replies rankable ala reddit. This would give us something like Community Notes, where the top responses are show up right under the OP. And the worst stuff for popular posts would be easily ignored.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

Good to see this feature getting thoughtful consideration!

One more element could be the ability to like/boost/save the original post easily, and not only the quote post. That can avoid another pitfall of quote posts: the quote getting more attention than the original.

Edit: Adding a quick and dirty edit of your mockup with added actions on the original post, just to illustrate the point :)

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

william.maggos

I assume you'd still be able to link to a post, it just wouldn't show up like a QP. You'd still be able to do what you do now when QPs don't exist on mastodon.

The distinction is a bit weird but I guess some people really want it to look pretty.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

I'm skeptical about the long-term social benefits of this feature, but I appreciate that you're building in user-level controls to try to mitigate harm, so I'm curious to see how it goes. I have a few questions:

1) Will users be able to opt one specific post out of *all* quotes? Or will they need to go individually retract the post from each place it has been quoted, potentially hundreds in the case of a large harassment effort?

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Guerric Haché

I see some of this was touched on in the specs shared elsewhere! Excellent.

I'm mostly left wondering about 3), as well as what options will be available for users whose post has received, say, 100 hostile quotes - after locking down that post, will they need to go through 100 individual, potentially abusive quotes and manually revoke them one by one?

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

would "withdraw your post from the quoted context" include (conforming clients) also masking the link to the post? That would (will) be an interesting interop/implementation challenge requiring such a "conforming client" (or server) to willingly cooperate and abide by the request.
(this last bit is just musing to myself, I guess, happy to read more if there is a design document from your research that already discusses this)

On a high level I applaud the team trying to accommodate (and listen) to the diversity of voices advocating for & against the feature and looking forward to how it fares! 💜

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

woohoo: perfection, if it works.
"In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:

‣ You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all.

‣ You will be notified when someone quotes you.

‣ You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time."

#mastodon #quoteposts

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

Lauren Weinstein reshared this.

in reply to EdCasting · 📡 🔵

@edcasting Basically, it boils down to: 1) Beware of unintended consequences and 2) Don't make promises that you may not be able to keep.

Essentially, giving users the "impression" that they can actually control quoting of their posts, when in reality any post can be "quoted" via screenshot without a technical way to block this, may create a situation actually worse than the status quo, since quoting will be considered more of a normal activity and screenshots (to get around posts that have "do not quote" flags) could actually increase overall. This kind of behavior is common on other social media platforms and realistically there are not good reasons to assume that they won't rise in popularity on this platform as well. Learn from history.

in reply to Lauren Weinstein

@lauren @edcasting To me this should be obvious, but for the sake of dummy-proofing, they can include a disclaimer stating you can block the feature, not every workaround, making it clear that it makes it harder to spread your comments, not impossible.
As for the frequency increase, I don't think this makes screenshotting more common; OTC it becomes more tedious, particularly for people used to it being automated.
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Mathias Hasselmann

@crossgolf_rebel @frumble So you are worried that the proposed mechanism can be circumvented? Of course it can be circumvented by working outside the protocol.

Still it usually are the built-in, the default mechanisms which set the baseline and define a social network's culture. That's what this proposal is talking about.

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

when Elon wants to implement a feature, he gives the developers a week to build it or get the sack, and then rolls out a thing nobody wants, provoking ship jumps.

When Mastodon wants to implement a festure, they do tonnes of research, think it out, write protocol extensions, consider how other networks might want to use it, and then write the feature.

It's almost like you don't have to be a d*** to run a social network 🤔

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Mathias Hasselmann

@crossgolf_rebel @frumble From what I see Mastdon follows the well documented and established FEP process.

Do you want to propose that Mastdon is not qualified to use the FEP process?

Do you question the FEP process at all?

What is the problem you want to address?

PS: If you want to discuss CW please explain your concerns in detail. I won't discuss yet another whistle blow.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

EdCasting · 📡 🔵

@amici @edcasting I understand you disagree strongly, and it's not to say being in the minority makes you wrong, but it's a hard case to make if people don't see a personal issue with allowing their own posts to be quoted. It's like trying to ban smoking; not that I think quotes are as harmful, but even if one conceded the point, it's basically your subjective opinion, against the opinion of the majority who actually want it.
in reply to myrmepropagandist

One other use case:

I sometimes want to share political news, but it's not tagged with "us pol" and I promised those who follow me I'd use that tag unless it was really important. Or there is a funny image with no alt text.

The ability to add context means more things will get shared.

Heck, I know people who don't share my posts with insect photos because they have a few people who follow them who are scared of insects. This is a more elegant solution.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

myrmepropagandist reshared this.

in reply to Cassandrich

@dalias
Every person on here is a little part of the algorithm and we all do things to be considerate and make what we post meaningful and relevant to people we talk to regularly.

There has been so much worry about "abuse" (which is really mitigated by the quality of the participants in a community and everyone being listened to more than tech) many may be blindsided by the upside. 😀

myrmepropagandist reshared this.

in reply to Cassandrich

Yeah, I don't see why I should help keep people who do nothing but harm famous and important seeming in ways that go beyond the harm that they do and any effort to stop them.

Which is why I really don't want to hear any gossip about a whole collection of names that dominate the news. This seems to be part of what keeps them powerful and I don't know why more people can't see this.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

It's been a long time coming. I welcome this feature coming with open arms.

The people who are against this are those that would be more at home on small niche forums and blogs. People who want every social media website to retain that early Reddit/Facebook/Tumblr vibe forever.

It's why I want more "normies" (i.e. non-techies) to come to Fedi. To drown out people who complain about every change no matter how much it improves UI/UX.

in reply to Gambloide

@Gambloide @Mastodon Engineering Not really. I use a screen reader. While I can technically take a screenshot in that I can capture an image of my screen, if I just wanted to include certain comments, or a post, etc. that wouldn't really be possible, as it would require manipulating an image rather than text. Being able to quote a post is more direct and is fully accessible.
in reply to Georgiana Brummell

@dandylover1
I am not saying every person on the planet has the ability to do this, that would be an immensely ignorant assumption.

I am saying, the blog post gives the impression of research grant money being wasted by designing a nicely painted door with multiple locks for a bike-shed that has an always open front-door.

in reply to Mastodon Engineering

@renchap

I propose a sub-point below "provide a way to opt out of being quoted altogether ... follow" in the specifications:

* provide a way for an *instance* to set the default for this feature to opt-in instead of opt-out

Motivation: this allows a community more at risk of dunking to lower the risk by selecting opt-in on their instance instead of opt-out. This feature would provide better support for the diversity of communities, not just the diversity of individuals.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Mastodon Engineering

This entry was edited (9 months ago)

damon reshared this.

in reply to Jon

reshared this

in reply to Jon

We can discuss this in further details if you want (and when I have a bit more time), but right now we are not set on any user-facing part of this. We started with the "easy" (which was not easy at all) part around ActivityPub but nothing is set in stone at the moment.
We are listening to many opinions and communities on this and also want to experiment a bit to see how things work in practice.

@andypiper

This entry was edited (9 months ago)
in reply to Renaud Chaput

@jdp23 Regarding the link => quote question, I think currently we plan to ask the user when they paste a link so they can transform it as a quote. There are a lot of complex interactions here and being really decentralised makes some things much harder. We do not want to provide a safe sense of safety where we can, as other AP software might not implement things the same way (or not implement some controls at all).

@andypiper

in reply to Renaud Chaput

Thanks for the reply @renchap! Agreed that there are a lot of complexities here, and that decentralization makes some things much harder. Glad to hear that the user-facing part isn't set in stone yet ... I misunderstood the comments in the spec doc to mean that the decision on the quoted text before comment had been made. FYI @laurenshof

In terms of the link-as-quote, that's how Sharkey does it today (so presumably also how Misskey does it?). It's a good point that how no matter what Mastodon does or doesn't do, other AP software is likely to support links that aren't quotes.

And agreed about not providing a false sense of safety ... just like any other functionality), even though quotes usually aren't used for abuse, they certainly can be. And, determined attackers can route around them. Still, speed bumps are useful, both for reducing low-effort drive-by attacks and the chances of quoting unintentionally leading to dogpiling. So, an interesting design challenge!

@andypiper

in reply to Renaud Chaput

@renchap yep. not sure if you've ever read @leigh's modelviewculture.com/pieces/an… from a decade ago but it makes this point very effectively!

@laurenshof @andypiper

in reply to Laurens Hof

@renchap

What concerns is me the potential situation where a Mastodon user sets a post to dontquote, and another user on another fedi software that has a different qp implementation that doesnt interoperate with dontquote rule then still quotes the post. More specifically, what will that social dynamic be like, and who will users blame for who's at fault here

@jdp23 @andypiper

in reply to Laurens Hof

@laurenshof the FEP mandates that you implement and respect the controls if you support quotes according to the FEP. If you write invalid software with potential malicious intent, I suspect you will quickly end up on many blocklist (like it already happens).
If you don’t support the FEP, then Mastodon won’t display it as a quote post, for example we don’t plan to support the current quote post « implementations » (RE: <url>) and such
@jdp23 @andypiper
in reply to Renaud Chaput

@renchap @jdp23 @andypiper

this is not about software with malicious intent, this is about platforms like misskey that have had quote posts 5 year before mastodon had

People have been quote posting Mastodon posts using *key platforms for a long while now, this is a settled pattern, I did this regularly when using firefish. But now Mastodon is introducing a 'dontquoteme' feature thats not supported by *key.

1/2

in reply to Laurens Hof

@renchap

How are people on *key supposed to know that a Mastodon post is not supposed to be quoted? That fully depends on the willingness of *key devs to implement your other noncompatible implementation of quoteposts. And in order to get them to do it you need to do federated diplomacy.

That's why I'm concerned with Mastodons declarative stance of 'this is how we are going to bring quote posts to the entire fediverse', because it makes the diplomacy harder

@jdp23 @andypiper

in reply to Laurens Hof

This entry was edited (9 months ago)
in reply to Jon

@jdp23 something to note is that GTS’s interaction policy is not an FEP. They did it on their own.
We are interested in what they did (and we are discussing with them, part of the quote post FEP comes from there). Once we get to interaction controls, if this is the way to go, we will work with the to make it an FEP.
@laurenshof @andypiper

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in reply to Renaud Chaput

Yeah, that's the asymmetry: GtS today is where Mastodon was in 2017, they have different constraints about doing things on their own than Mastodon does in 2025.

In general I think it would be better to look at the control over quoting in the context of interaction controls in general. (even I realize that the implementation of applying reply controls is more complicated than control over whether or not things can be quoted). But of course that just adds to the resource requirements.

@renchap @laurenshof @andypiper

This entry was edited (9 months ago)
in reply to Andy Piper

@andypiper @jdp23 @renchap

I think its not so much a matter of being as careful and mindful as possible (while thats obviously a great thing to do), but that fedi is lacking the political layer for diplomacy between different fediverse platforms. 'Listening and Learning' is a framing between a platform and its end-users. But what I think is going wrong here is not seeing other platforms as equal partners that need to be negotiated with

in reply to Laurens Hof

@laurenshof This is indeed a big "issue" (is it really an issue? idk) as there is no formal diplomacy process. We (Mastodon) do not plan to solve this issue for everyone, but we have established some (closed) places to have discussions with other implementors. Our FEP draft was shared & commented on those places for several weeks/months before being made public.

@andypiper @jdp23

in reply to Jazzonbike

@jazzonbike the 4.4.0 beta was just made available, and this enables inbound quote posts to be displayed. We hope to have 4.5.0 out in a few months with full support for authoring them. oisaur.com/@renchap/1146270591…


Target for 4.4.0 is end of month (or first week of July).

4.5 is "when we finished fully implementing quote posts", which I hope will be September or October at the latest.

@Gargron