QTs are overall bad & their absense helps make Mastodon 'nicer' than Twitter
as an ex-troll I know QTs are THE main weapon in the arsenal of harassment, call it the 'LibsOfTicToc Effect'.
On Twitter a malicious QT by a large account with high engagement exposes the OP to 10's or 100's of thousands of hostile eyes, with predictable results. The scale is different here, but the usage would not be
yes there are benign, helpful uses for QTs, as there are for most dangerous tools but imo the negatives FAR outweigh the positives
anyone who's been on twitter knows probably 80% of QTs are negative interactions and de facto invitations for followers to dogpile a target, to the point where larger accounts not wanting to be responsible for one will post screenshots instead of QTing directly
and yes I saw that post by that Twitter guy who says THE NUMBERS SHOW that they don't increase harassment, and to that I say LMFAOOO
why the fuck do you think EVERY troll used them? bc due to some blind spot in Twitter Support you can say shit in a QT that would get you INSTA BANNED if it were a reply
I assume that wouldn't be the case here, but just speaking to the idiocy of Twitter employees, who have never and still do not understand the platform, AT ALL
@ancient_catbus 80% negative hasn't been my experience at all. Just not in the slightest. I see QTs used as tools for humour, recommendation, and commentary.
I think what's happened is you've been hanging out in horrible parts of Twitter, and assumed it was all like that. It's not!
@twic @ancient_catbus the exact proportion of positive use to negative use isn’t really as important as the harm caused by those negative uses IMHO.
I’m not entirely sure that getting rid of QTs really solves for harassment as well as anyone hopes. But even if 99% of QT usage was benign, the situations where it’s used for toxicity/harassment are *really* bad. Bad enough that I think it’s worth looking at critically.
@ancient_catbus @twic I agree with this. And even when there are workarounds, every little roadblock does cut down on the number of trolls willing to make the effort.
When I say I’m not sure about getting rid of them, I just mean it might be worth exploring consent-based middle ground options, or generally more granular control over who can interact with a post and in what way (which is probably worth implementing with or w/o QTs).
@twic I hung out in a very nice, normal part of Twitter with mostly folks I knew in real life. That didn't stop QTs of my helpful thread on masks back in March 2020.
The bad side found me, found my job, and threatened my entire livelihood over me literally explaining the differences between mask types.
Your comment is a tad bit victim-blame-y ngl
@ancient_catbus I'm a fan of the "moderated QTs" idea, which proposes allowing users to have the following settings on accounts and individual Toots:
1. no QTs whatsoever
2. QTs, but only those approved by the user
3. open QTs a la Twitter
with #2 as the default setting
@ancient_catbus
I do kind of wish we had a way to attach why we like something to a boost though. i always boost but sometimes i add an extra post with a link and some explanation why i liked it, or to tell people its a thread and click through, and then i feel kind of bad if my post gets boosts rather than the thing it points to.
i know that's dumb and most ppl would probably say they don't care about boosts, but I still feel bad
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