In my opinion, quote tweets don't lead to harassment any more than replies lead to harassment or tagging leads to harassment. The feature was born out of organic user behavior and users manually typing "RT" in front of stuff they were quote tweeting in order to share. Not having native QTs and forcing people to manually type "RT" with the text they were quote tweeting led to confusion and misinformation spreading as ppl would often alter the manual RT text! 2/

In my experience, people are far more likely to harass in the replies than in the quote posts bc quote posts posts to their own timeline. And regardless, I think having a native way to amplify and comment or add to content on a platform is really important. This is why TikTok has the Stitch and Duet function. 3/

Even on Tumblr, the Reblog feature includes the original post. Do Tumblr reblogs lead to harassment? No!! This is natural user behavior and makes the sharing of ideas, information, commentary, etc easier. It's what users will do anyway whether or not you facilitate it. By refusing to acknowledge this and making it harder for ppl however, the platform will be less useful and re-shared information will be less reliable 4/

I think if people want Mastodon to be a place where news media thrives, where ppl can openly and freely exchange ideas, amplify content etc we need a quote post/Tumblr reblog-like function. The way to curb harassment isn't to refuse key features imo, it's to give more control. For ex, giving users the ability to turn quote posts on/off, etc. And I just want to reiterate again that this is all simply my own personal perspective! I know many disagree and that's fine :D 5/