Paul GrahamOne of the best features of Mastodon is the lack of quote-tweeting. I'd forgotten how great that was. And unfortunately for Twitter, it's a feature that they'll never be able to copy.
Jan@paulg Hey Paul, you can edit posts, not needed to delete and post again š
Sam Gichuru
Mr. Jones@paulg It definitely cuts down the amount of snark in my feed.
Robotbeat@paulg They could still kill it. But being reliant on outrage to drive traffic and eyeballs for ad revenue means they wonāt unless they can get away from being so ad-driven.
firasd@paulg I plan to write a post about this... when Twitter users organically did "quote tweeting" before 2014, they used to write a reply to someone and move the '@' sign later in the text.
Like "I agree @ person: I love ice cream"
Since the @ was not at the start, such replies used to be visible to the replier's followers too
When Twitter implemented native QT they broke this concept. QTs were separate from replies which was their 'original sin' I think.
Ryan Briggs
Jake Jarvis 
@ryancbriggs @firasd @paulg oh man, I totally forgot about the whole "RT @" + copying and pasting their tweet. simpler times!
Charles Williamson@paulg And the lack of threads! :)
Marek Gibney@paulg What's wrong with quote-tweeting?
Grant McConnaugheyI used it from time to time to reference an older tweet of mine. That worked well for me:
Miguel Madeira
Cameron WattersOne of the common uses is to criticize the content or author of the original tweet to one's audience (replies are typically hidden from main feed)
That can be a useful and effective tool for social accountability when the critique is aimed at high-status / powerful person saying or doing problematic or harmful things.
It is also frequently used for dog-piling and stochastic terrorism against marginalized people, which is often dangerous for the target.
Madhur Chadha ā
(Product &Tech)@paulg there is a workaround though.... Where you can copy paste the link to tweet. Haven't seen many ppl use it though. Quote tweeting is discouraged by design because ppl feel it encourages unnecessary pile ons
https://mas.to/@paulg/109541278664979840
https://mas.to/@paulg/109541278664979840
Paul Graham (@[email protected])
One of the best features of Mastodon is the lack of quote-tweeting. I'd forgotten how great that was. And unfortunately for Twitter, it's a feature that they'll never be able to copy.
@paulg one more thing... That surprised me as well.
They do not have free text search. People navigate via hashtags . Apparently that's also by design.
You may not have an issue with it (large account) , but if you do talk about a topic, it would be really helpful for people if you tag it.
Eg: you could start a #PressByPaulg for just your press answers... And journalists could follow just that hashtag .
Tae Kim@paulg One of the original principles. I agree completely. Totally different atmosphere and less performative misrepresentation by engagement farmers
Chaos@paulg there are two camps. some really want it added. some are happy it's not here. A compromise could be to allow the OP to set his toots to be unquotable.
Mackaj@paulg Yeah, the lack of dunking here is a real plus. Some people complain they miss it, but the benefits outweigh the shortcomings. Dialogue here is generally much healthier too due to the lack of algorithms promoting contentious hashtags and 'popular' subjects.
Welcome to Mastodon.
Obie@paulg I really did enjoy the quote tweet feature lol
Bill Prin@paulg biggest problem with Mastodon is its full of complaining about elon / twitter. looking for some programming / startup people to follow. jumping on pg thread to get attention, please shill me accounts to follow. see my last post for topics im interested in.
Olcan@paulg agree!
israel@paulg this is only one poll away, who knows what the next occurrence of Musk will be...
Lukas R.@paulg I saw a thread that explained why quote-tooting should be added to Mastodon, and I mostly agree.
If quote-tooting was already a thing, I'd link it here.
Graham Carruthers@paulg I quite like quote tweets, especially when the person quote tweeting has something good to add. However I do agree that it is a system encourages pile-ons and a lot of snark.
Julien@paulg it makes it purer
insanedreamer@paulg actually quote tweeting and threads are features I miss since moving here
Ronnie Higgins@paulg Interesting. It's one of the features I miss the most. Someone said it was purposefully lacking because it doesn't contribute to conversations.
What's your take?
Bianca@paulg I also appreciate that other peoples ālikesā donāt show up in my feed.
Konstantin SchubertI assume this is a front end feature. One can just build a front end that renders a tweet with a link in it as a quote tweet.
If one wanted.
Julian@paulg Quote retweeting is a rather "strange" concept. It's like I am taking your words and running with it under a new context.
lgtm@paulg I remember reading it was an intentional design choice. One of the things many new people who were used to dunking on others requested a lot. I did not agree in the beginning but now Iām seeing its value, especially after witnessing firsthand how some people I followed on twitter got harassed to hell for some innocuous tweet because somebody QTād them
ovi@paulg gonna be a lotta screengrabs all the way down to replicate it LOL
KazinatorIf you're inclined, you can dump the full URL of a Toot into your own Toot; essentially quoting it like any other URL-identified resource. The ergonomics isn't quite "quote tweet" but for occasionally writing a Toot which references another Toot (rather than replying to it), it ought to do the job.
You can't prevent people from quoting you on the Internet such that you don't know about it.
Kavir@paulg No dunking on others here
muI won't be so sure of that @paulg. Mastodon federates with the rest of #fediverse as well and it is only a matter of time that some other protocol will implement twitter like quote "feature".
Mikko Alasaarela@paulg well, it is possible to share a post with a link to a Mastodon post, which performs the same function. But I also like the simplicity of boosting and commenting.
themroc@paulg that's by design.
Mastodon has no interest in maximizing engagement, so many twitter features that were found to facilitate abuse were not implemented.
Quote tweets was one of those, or a complete search engine that would allow you to search for every instance of a word within a specific account or across the whole platform for example.
(that is why people use so many hashtags, that is the way you deliberately chose to make your post discoverable with a given key word)
Mastodon has no interest in maximizing engagement, so many twitter features that were found to facilitate abuse were not implemented.
Quote tweets was one of those, or a complete search engine that would allow you to search for every instance of a word within a specific account or across the whole platform for example.
(that is why people use so many hashtags, that is the way you deliberately chose to make your post discoverable with a given key word)
massimosgrelli š@paulg quote-tweeting? How?
Daniel Jonsson@paulg Why did you not like quote-tweeting?
Rick@paulg I donāt understand why quote-tweeting was bad nor why they canāt implement it. Could you elaborate?
Ben Schulz@paulg completely agree. QTs hijack conversations, and encourage shouting at someone rather than genuinely engaging with them.
Paul Magrath@paulg I like it too. I always feel quote tweeting, tempting as it is, is a bit like shouting and pointing, or holding up someone's exercise book to show the whole class - ooh look at THIS. Obviously there are perfectly acceptable uses too, but that seems to be the mode.