First and foremost, there's just not a lot of good research on this specific question. The idea that QTs are a sluice of harassment is kind of an intuitive canard at this point--and with good reason. Getting a hostile QT *is* an express maglev to Paintown.

But in terms of establishing how frequently quote tweets lead there, there's only a bit of data on the ground. It's often a small part of research into other, larger issues.

Let's first consider "Echo chambers revisited: The (overwhelming) sharing of in-group politicians, pundits and media on Twitter" by Magdalena Wojcieszak and colleagues--Andreu Casas, Xudong Yu, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker.

In short, it's what it says on the tin. They studied how Twitter users interact with posts by political elites on the platform to try and put some empirical handles on whether there are indeed "echo chambers" on the platform (spoiler: yes.)

Here's the relevant bit on quote tweeting, drawn from a large sample. Classifying how ordinary users responded to liberal and conservative elites' posts (journos, politicians, etc.).

If you suspected conservatives live in a tighter echo chamber, congrats, here's some data for you. But liberals' isn't that much larger.

And here we see that most QTs when directed at *out-group* members are negative. Overhwhelmingly so.

@Quinnae_Moon

How does de-federation from outgroup (a.k.a. fascist) instances affect those ratios?

@emmah I can't say! Some? I think the issue for me is noting the large volume of in-group negative QTing, which is something I've become increasingly concerned about in both my academic and popular work.

So: defed from fascist instances? Great! Now what to do about the horrible things that, say, progressives and/or members of minority groups do to *each other*?