I realize that there are reasons that Mastodon doesn't allow #QuoteTooting the way that Twitter has #QuoteTweeting.
That said, even after 9 months of using Mastodon almost exclusively, I still catch myself trying to quote toot something only to remember that (essentially) I can't.
#quotetweets #QuoteToots #quoteTweeting
Quoting @darius :
Whoa, cool blog post summarizing a bunch of available studies on quote tweeting behavior -- research that I was unaware existed!
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/01/12/quote-tweeting-over-30-studies-dispel-some-myths/
No silver bullets that will end any debates here but, you know, here's some data at least
When people ask for the ability to quote posts _and_ the ability to edit posts, I think it shows their brains have been broken by using Twitter for years. For journalists — whose job it is to care about historical accuracy of text they're reporting on — it's a sign they're being lazy or disingenuous, so shame on them for crying that they want to have their cake and eat it.
Truthiness matters. People on Twitter asked for years for the ability to edit tweets. Mastodon gave us the "Edit" button. Fantastic! This comes at the cost of negating the utility of quote-posting, since the author can see your quote and edit what they wrote. The reason to quote is to provide context. But, if that context is mutable then it diminishes our trust in the quote and thus removes its semantic value. (Sure, Mastodon shows if a toot as been edited and lets us see previous versions, but this is lost in a world of clickbait headlines and mainstream media articles that embed toots/tweets).
For the sake of clear communication and community safety, we shouldn't give abusers, haters, bad actors, *-phobes, scammers, gaslighters, liars (or all of the above; for convenience let's say "politicians") the ability to change what they said after they've been quoted.
Make a screenshot. The original author can't edit that.
During my first few weeks on Masto I found myself reaching for that QT button a lot. Not having it made me pause and really think about whether adding my two cents was valuable or not. In most cases, it was not. It made my engagement more mindful, and was better for my followers, I’m sure. I’m glad we don’t have the ability to QT and I hope we never add it.
Although I don’t discount the danger of quote tweeting in regard to harassment, I actually think the better argument in favor of not having the feature is general conversational health of the platform. The ability to dunk on someone’s post with zero friction is something I’d prefer we do without.
For example, there's an ongoing discussion about the role of #QuoteTweeting, which Mastodon's core devs have eschewed as conducive to antisocial dunks, but which some parts of #BlackTwitter describe as key to a healthy discourse:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/21/Mastodon-Ethics
But quote tweeting wasn't initially a part of Twitter. Instead, users kludged it, pasting in text and URLs for others' tweets to make it work.
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@sdvicto Yes. #QuoteTweeting here is not a thing. This is intentional because it is believed that it is performative and an easy way to dunk on other users. You can find lots of discussion about this, but the bottom line is that it will probably not be implemented anytime soon. Once you use Mastodon for a while and get over the initial frustration of not being able to quickly post someone else's work and critique it, you may understand the rational behind this better.
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