Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, takes on a controversial feature from the platform: Quote Posts, previously known as Twitter. The company shared progress on Friday regarding the implementation of the feature. This divides users into possibilities for online abuse and bullying.
Critics have long argued that the addition of quoted tweets will ruin Twitter and help turn the network into a more toxic online community.
Some Mastodon users strongly feel that quoted posts do not belong to Mastodon. This feature is often used to “dunk” in other people’s posts, so it can not only create negativity, but also help to promote the flood of original abusive replies. Post Author – especially if Dunker is a well-known individual with many followers.
However, other Mastodon users would like to see quoted posts added to make it easier to see other people’s posts and their content when dealing with them. Additionally, the cited posts will more match the networks along with competitors including X and newer rivals such as Threads and Bluesky.
Mastodon pointed out in a blog post that he recognizes that the feature is a “source of concern” for some and that it is “highly demanded” from others.
“Many people just don’t want to reconstruct their content into others. Or they may find that if it’s reposted they will pay unwelcome attention. Hmm,” says Mastodon’s blog post.
The organization applied for a grant in 2024 to fund the development of quotation marks development after previous discussions on functionality. Now, the team is sharing progress, particularly in that they want to alleviate user complaints.
First of all, Mastodon says it allows users to control whether or not they can quote a post. This provides some protection from people being recipients of unnecessary attention and hateful replies. (However, perhaps people can screenshot someone’s post to circulate more widely if they’re going to troll users.)
Additionally, if someone is quoting them, the user will be notified and can always pull the post from the cited context. This latter option is useful if someone’s quoted post goes viral, and the original poster will either pay too much attention or start to be abused and force them to reconsider whether they can quote the post at all. Masu.
Beyond the possibility of abuse, Mastodon also has technical implementations of quotation mark posts as there is no standardized way to build functionality on ActivityPub, the underlying protocol that enhances Mastodon and other federated apps. They say there are challenges.
Some third-party Mastodon clients already offer their own version of the quote posting, but do not include any features that Mastodon wants to add for additional user control and privacy. As a result, Mastodon is working with others to create a specification that allows all Mastodon apps and clients to access the same functionality.
Quotation mark posts also affect announcements such as other parts of Mastodon’s codebase, ActivityPub processing code, public APIs, web user interface, moderation panels and features, admin panels, official iOS and Android applications.
Unfortunately, Mastodon’s announcement did not share any kind of timeline for public releases, how long it will be before the feature was added.