I feel like it's worth mentioning, re; quote-boosts/QTs, that we can't "just add the feature to Mastodon" in a federation - it's a lot more complicated than a lot of people seem to realise?

The argument about whether or not we should add QTs is an important one, but once we get past that there's the issue of federation.

Mastodon is one software of many using the ActivityPub "skeleton" code. If ActivityPub doesn't have QTs in its code and Mastodon adds a QT feature, any non-Mastodon software (or even server) has to work out how to interpret Mastodon's QTs. If it isn't Mastodon-compatible, QTs will just break. They might even break in a way that harms the person being QTed. And what if someone on *another* server boosts/reblogs that broken QT?

Also, since we on Mastodon can follow people who are using federated software that isn't Mastodon (e.g. instances/softwares that look and behave like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc), how does that work? Would people on Mastodon be able to QT people on not-Mastodon? How are the OPs going to feel about that? Would they even get notifications about it, since QTs aren't in the ActivityPub "skeleton" of federation?

And since we're a federation of separate servers even "within" Mastodon, there's also the question of how older/outdated Mastodon servers will handle incoming QTs. If you're on an older version of Mastodon and you follow someone on a newer instance and they QT someone, what would that look like? Maybe someone has intentionally chosen a fork of Mastodon with QTs turned off. Can people on other softwares QT them, and how would they feel about that?

[ #meta #Mastodon #MastoMeta #MastoDev #QTs #QuoteBoosts #QuoteToot #discourse ]

My personal stance on QTs/quote-boosts is fairly neutral.

I can see pros and cons to each, and the feature is neutral but humans are fallible and often engage in harmful behaviours intentionally or accidentally.

I can also see how moderators would have a LOT of work on their hands with this feature, plus would need lots of mastery with nuance and rule-communication.

I think on the whole it's probably not worth the effort. Journalism Twitter did okay pre-QTs, but if they just absolutely can't go back to a QTless existence then perhaps a fork of Mastodon or a new Fediverse software needs to be designed. In the mean time, they can like it or lump it - Twitter does still exist. Would you rather have QTs, or no-Elon-Musk, innit?

@cassolotl there are ActivityPub services that allow quoting (although I don't think they're explicitly Quote Boosting, it's more Quote Replying) such as Akkoma and for them it works quite well. However... This proves what you've said. While users on Akkoma can interact with those on Mastodon, we cannot see quotes from Akko users. Mastodon and the apps just do not interpret them. Also, Akkoma has Reactions, which are invisible to us on Mastodon as Mastodon doesn't interpret them.

@yassie_j

Apps that dont support Quote toots can see them just fine, its just that they appear as a link at the end of the toot rather than the actual quote.

If you dont see the quote toot your on a server that explicitly goes out of its way to strip it.

@cassolotl

@freemo @cassolotl ahhhh that makes sense. I didn't know exactly what it would look like for me.

@yassie_j

If your instance doesnt explicitly strip it then it would look like this at the end of the post:

[ QT: <link to post being quoted> ]

@cassolotl