Paul GrahamDec 19, 2022
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.
Show threadfirasd

@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.

Dec 19, 2022 at 4:32pmWeb
Show threadRyan BriggsDec 19, 2022
@firasd @paulg i can’t exactly remember the history now, but requiring people to type out “QT @ Handle” also burned precious characters and I think that was useful. I think it limited how far messages could spread, and forced *very* short commentary (these were 140 char days).
Show threadJake Jarvis Dec 19, 2022
@ryancbriggs @firasd @paulg oh man, I totally forgot about the whole "RT @" + copying and pasting their tweet. simpler times!