Mastodon, the decentralized different to X, goes to undertake a controversial characteristic from the platform previously generally known as Twitter: quote posts. The corporate on Friday shared the progress it’s making on the implementation of the characteristic, which has divided customers over its potential for use for on-line abuse and bullying.
Critics have lengthy argued that the addition of quote tweets helped to destroy Twitter, turning the community right into a extra poisonous on-line neighborhood.
Some Mastodon customers really feel strongly that quote posts don’t belong on Mastodon, because the characteristic is commonly used to “dunk” on one other individual’s submit, which not solely breeds negativity however also can end in serving to spur a flood of abusive replies to the unique submit’s creator — particularly if the dunker is a high-profile particular person with numerous followers.
Nevertheless, different Mastodon customers wish to see quote posts added, because the characteristic makes it simpler to reference one other individual’s submit and its content material when making a response. Plus, quote posts would convey the community extra in step with its rivals, together with X in addition to newer rivals like Threads and Bluesky.
Mastodon famous in its weblog submit that it’s conscious that the characteristic is each a “source of concern” for some and “highly requested” by others.
“Many people simply do not want their content to be reframed by others; or they may find that if it is reposted, they receive unwelcome attention,” the Mastodon weblog submit says.
The group utilized for a grant to assist fund the event of quote posts again in 2024 after earlier discussions across the characteristic. Now, the crew is sharing its progress, significantly when it comes to the way it hopes to mitigate consumer complaints.
For starters, Mastodon says it is going to permit customers to manage whether or not their posts might be quoted in any respect. This could defend individuals from being the recipient of undesirable consideration or hateful replies to some extent. (Although, arguably, individuals may nonetheless screenshot somebody’s submit to flow into it extra broadly in the event that they supposed to troll the consumer.)
As well as, customers might be notified if somebody quotes them, they usually’ll have the ability to withdraw their submit from the quoted context at any time. This latter possibility may assist in the case that somebody’s quote submit goes viral, and the unique poster begins to obtain an excessive amount of consideration and even abuse, forcing them to rethink whether or not they need their submit to be quotable in any respect.
Past the potential for abuse, Mastodon says there are additionally technical challenges across the implementation of quote posts, as there’s not a standardized approach to construct the characteristic in ActivityPub, the underlying protocol that powers Mastodon and different federated apps.
Some third-party Mastodon purchasers additionally already provide their very own model of quote posts, however they don’t embody the options that Mastodon needs so as to add for added consumer management and privateness. Because of this, Mastodon is collaborating with others to create a specification that will permit all Mastodon apps and purchasers to entry the identical performance.
Quote posts will even have an effect on different elements of Mastodon’s code base, the announcement states, together with the ActivityPub-handling code, the general public API, the online consumer interface, the moderation panel and capabilities, the administration panel, and the official iOS and Android purposes.
Sadly, Mastodon’s announcement didn’t share how for much longer it will likely be earlier than the characteristic is added or any kind of timeline for public launch, solely saying that quote posts “will still take more time to develop.”
