Annalee Newitz 🍜Let me put a phrase into your mind: nonconsensual virality. It's why quote-posts on Twitter led to harassment. People's words stolen, taken out of context, used purely to incite a mob of griefers. The answer is to give #Mastodon users control over whether someone else can quote-post them, with a simple "quote or not" setting that can be set before or after the post goes up. We should be allowed to stop people from taking our posts viral without our consent.
I've been a journalist for over twenty years -- I've written for venues ranging from tiny zines to the New York Times. And I think users should have control over quote-posts. If a journo wants to report something that they can’t quote-post, I believe that the ten-second friction required to cut-and-paste some text, or to screengrab it, is helpful to the journalistic process. Taking a beat to consider whether we really want to quote something, and how we want to frame it? Literally our job.
Loukas (They/Them) 🏳️⚧️@annaleen since realising how well detecting alt-text from pictures works I'm thinking of screenshotting more
Līga
Cypher
Femme Malheureuse@annaleen This. I've had to think harder about this because I also had to write alt-text to accompany the image embedded with a link. It's definitely a more thoughtful process.
I can understand marginalized persons especially BIPOC want QT, but cultural reasons are a different driver than productivity.
We should be asking what marginalized communities *need* to achieve their aims rather than ask if they want what was provided with little to no BIPOC input at a commercial platform.
Eric Dannewitz
Lee 🌏@annaleen
Taking time to think before you Toot is no bad thing. How much venom is spewed on Twitter because it's so quick and easy?
Taking a moment to write alt text, to "quote toot," or do any other activity is no bad thing. Slowing us down just a little, to think a little deeper, to toot a little more considerately is a good thing.
Taking time to think before you Toot is no bad thing. How much venom is spewed on Twitter because it's so quick and easy?
Taking a moment to write alt text, to "quote toot," or do any other activity is no bad thing. Slowing us down just a little, to think a little deeper, to toot a little more considerately is a good thing.
Irwin Sheer@annaleen I think it has been overlooked that you can already quote post by including a link to the original post.
Annalee Newitz (@[email protected])
I've been a journalist for over twenty years -- I've written for venues ranging from tiny zines to the New York Times. And I think users should have control over quote-posts. If a journo wants to report something that they can’t quote-post, I believe that the ten-second friction required to cut-and-paste some text, or to screengrab it, is helpful to the journalistic process. Taking a beat to consider whether we really want to quote something, and how we want to frame it? Literally our job.
@irwinsheer I have been surprised by how many people don't seem to realize this? Or they think it's too hard to do as compared to a quote-post?
Jim RichardsonInserting the link to a toot at present does not notify the original poster, whereas a good implementation of Annalee's proposal would.
Of course, bad actors could still avoid notifying by using a screenshot or a link, as they can now. But benign users of QT would be happy that the OP was notified.
Josh Soref@jimrhiz @annaleen @irwinsheer I'd expect ActivityPub agents to respect the HTTP standard and include the Referer [sic] header which would mean that their servers could discover those inbound linking elements as users traverse the graph.
Kevin@irwinsheer @annaleen the objection is that it doesn’t show the quoted post inline. I feel it could lead to more sensational, click-bait commentary to entice people to click, or people will just read the comment out of context. If I read “this was a good book” with a link, I don’t know if it’s worth my time. People will naturally gravitate to hyperbole like “This book changed my life!” and then I’ve wasted effort to find out it’s about toads in Guatemala. No offense to toad aficionados.
Wren Birdie@annaleen
“ Taking a beat to consider whether we really want to quote something, and how we want to frame it? Literally our job.”
Yes! I didn’t know how to articulate this the way you did but yes… this exactly.
Alexander 🐘@annaleen how would you prevent screenshots? How would you prevent, that the url to a toot is copied and pasted?
You cannot.
And that's not possible, it's better to accept that and make quotes a feature. This way, it can be controlled how it looks and behaves.
@alexs77 Disagree. Nobody can stamp out all forms of abuse, but we can add some friction. Given what we learned from Twitter, it's clear that adding some friction can actually make a big difference.
@annaleen this "friction" doesn't make it harder to harass a person. It only harms persons that should be protected. To have better protection, a working quote toot feature should be there, so that quoted persons can directly see, where they are quoted.
Not having such a feature is harmful.
[MOVED] Neopolitan@tn5421 @annaleen true. With this friction, it's easier to harass people. Good use cases suffer, though. If I'm annoyed by a toot, it's easy enough to copy the url or Screenshot and poste that, adding a comment like "what a moron". Because then "energy" isn't much of an issue.
But for adding something like "look that's nice" - I often couldn't be bothered.
Having no quote feature achieves the opposite of what is actually wanted.
garywiz@annaleen
Isn’t it inevitable that some 3rd-party app will soon make one-click quote posting possible regardless of whether Mastodon has native support?
Isn’t it inevitable that some 3rd-party app will soon make one-click quote posting possible regardless of whether Mastodon has native support?
@garywiz I've heard that there are already instances that allow quote-posts, though I have not seen it.
Asiyah@annaleen thank you for saying this.
yunchtime@annaleen completeley agree! when I began using twitter, the lack of "quote tweets" reduced the toxicity level by 1000%. What boosts and replies accomplish is to create a dialog directly between the poster and the respondent which is NOT a "performance" for fans to follow. that is MUCH healthier and I see no reason at all to allow "quote posting," when copying and pasting is not only simple, but forces to the "quote poster" to make their own case rather then dishing on someone else.
藤井太洋, Taiyo Fujii@annaleen thank you, I agree!
Kevin Carson@annaleen It's better to copypaste anyway. An embedded tweet disappears if the account is deleted.
Marc Jacobs@annaleen This is really thoughtful. As usual for your toots/tweets.
I thought this was simpler until I read your take.
Thank you!
Charles Roper@annaleen Agree. And it was Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen who, in front of US and UK lawmakers, described how she called for more friction to be *added* to social media systems to decrease the amplication of harmful content. Facebook of course refused to do this. Now here we are talking about bringing in features to grease up Mastodon. The friction is a feature, not a bug.
@annaleen this whole thing is moot. There are two forks of Mastodon code that are still federated that allows quote toots.
Iggy (@skroobler)
@[email protected] @[email protected] My personal instance (this one), that I just spun up today, is a Misskey server, which has quote-posting. So does Akkoma. It's certainly not as simple as "have people who want quote-posting spin up their own Misskey servers", but it seems like getting the word out about them would be helpful. RE: @[email protected] Screen cap with a link is very rude to photographers and artists. Who are often the people I want to QT the most, sometimes with some context for the image, others, using it as a jumping off point for a greater reflection. QT lets people use images and give full credit. And it helps those images get more attention. It's about collaboration. text+image=something new and more alive than either alone RE: ...
Skeptical Eye@annaleen -
Over the years on Twitter, I have been a heavy (and I assert very fair) user of quote-retweet, and I have also been quote-retweeted a lot (and never had a problem with that).
Personally, I take great offense if someone screen grabs or copy-pastes my Tweet rather than quote-retweeting, as that deprives me of the boost, and possibly also of any credit at all. ...more...
Over the years on Twitter, I have been a heavy (and I assert very fair) user of quote-retweet, and I have also been quote-retweeted a lot (and never had a problem with that).
Personally, I take great offense if someone screen grabs or copy-pastes my Tweet rather than quote-retweeting, as that deprives me of the boost, and possibly also of any credit at all. ...more...
@annaleen -
... AND worse, I don't get notified when someone screen grabs or copy-pastes, so I don't have the opportunity to thank them, or otherwise respond.
... AND worse, I don't get notified when someone screen grabs or copy-pastes, so I don't have the opportunity to thank them, or otherwise respond.
Brian Edwards-Tiekert@annaleen Agree, I don't miss dunk culture one bit. Also I think having a user-controllable QT function would make it clearer when the workarounds--like screen grabbing--are really a breach of consent/etiquette.
Derek Powazek 🐐@annaleen you’re absolutely right, but this topic is the third rail around here. Prepare for a lot of opinions strongly held and based on mostly on vibes.
@annaleen (and now I realize I was responding to an old post, so, uh, nm)
@fraying so far people have been offering very helpful responses and sincere consideration of the issue. It's so weird! We're not on Twitter anymore! ❤️
@annaleen glad to hear it! This topic is one of the few that’s led me to have to block a few people here.
@fraying well I'm not saying there weren't a few blocks here and there lol. But it was genuinely shocking to find myself in the midst of a debate where 98 percent of responses were intended to be constructive, even if the person disagreed with me. it was actually what really made me fall in love with Mastodon.
@annaleen I love it.