Arthur Kauffman
Christina WarrenI miss quote tweeting the most. I rarely abused it and I think the argument it was primarily used for abuse both devalues the real value of why USERS invented the quote tweet to begin with and gives too much power to the so-called abuse that could be better solved with better abuse/block tools.
Ben Roethig@film_girl ice cubes can quote toot
@benroethig yeah, but not every server supports it so it’s weird.
Paul Haddad 
@film_girl I really miss it too, I've tried to adapt to it, I really have but still miss it.
@paul users invented the RT/QT for a reason, you know?
Scott Perry@film_girl @paul I feel like sufficiently advanced link previews in the client could bridge a lot of this gap, even allowing "quoting" from off-network
@numist @film_girl honestly at that point its just playing silly games, hydrate the Post and add a option to Quote from the Boost button and call it a day.
At this point the only reason I haven't done it is because I have concerns of how to do it without causing a height changing timeline, which I try to avoid as much as possible.
@paul @film_girl Totally, but I'd argue silly games are good; they're how these things become real—like how Twinkle caused location tagging to become part of Twitter.
wrt height-changing do you mean because the cells would load previews asynchronously? Definitely seems like care would be needed to avoid weird scroll offset woe.
@numist @film_girl yes Twitter had an API that allowed you to load up to 100 Tweets at a time, that'd be really good for something like this as we could hydrate the Posts at load time and base layout, etc.. on that.
Here you can only load one post at a time by ID, which makes that kind of technique very problematic. What if there's 20 quotes in your timeline.
@paul @film_girl Oof, yeah. I guess you could add posts to the visible timeline as they become data-complete (batched into some time quanta) but even that is going to require thoughtful code—suddenly the silly game has gotten serious
@numist add to that, hey guess what there's no way to really 100% tell if a link is an actual link to a post or a link that just has a similar format.
@paul Well, previews don't have to be restricted to toots, as long as you can determine whether there are social card tags in the head then you're good (quote-tooting a tweet being the most obviously useful possibility).
Unless the site is too slow but in the incremental model you'd need heuristics on when to give up on a preview regardless.
@numist doing something like that, a direct request to the site, is problematic from the privacy standpoint. Right now everything goes from the client to the server and nowhere else (I mean obviously unless you tap on a link and open it SFVC).
@paul Yeah, appropriately enough it's also a thundering herd problem. CDNs solve this problem for static assets, feels like there's an opportunity for a preview caching service. Hmmmm…
Steve Lhomme@paul @numist @film_girl the way @icecubesapp does it seems to work well. At least when viewed inside Ice Cubes. They look OK in Ivory too. Can't there be Metadata attached to a toot that you could add and says it's a quote based on another toot.
Lydia@numist @film_girl @paul Agree, the ability to preview another website’s/new articles’s headline and lede instead of a url is really valuable and something I miss about bird site.
keeps vis.social running@film_girl @paul If this was twitter, I'd probably QT this post and say something like...'mastodon avoided QT for reasons'...maybe address those reasons and stop trying to recreate twitter. It really was horrible.
We have an opportunity to rethink all of that, here, now. And build something so much better, together.
@kristinHenry @paul I mean, Twitter didn’t adopt it as a feature until 2012 or so. It was invented by users and then third-party apps to give additional context, nuance, detail, or to amplify in a way that wouldn’t get scrolled through. And yes, to dunk on people. Which still happens even without the feature.
@film_girl @paul 2012 was 11 years ago! Why should mastodon jump to support it after just a few months of migrations?
You can still do a QT here, you just have to go through the step of getting the link to the post you want to comment on.
The tech isn't the problem.
@kristinHenry @paul I don’t really care if Mastodon officially supports it or not. I just want an easier way to link to a post in the clients I use and to view the content without having to click or tap on something else. Quote tweets are just another interface for reblogging, something nearly every social network (inclusion Mastodon) has done for 15 years. The QRT button was introduced in 2015 but largely used before that and better displayed in third-party clients.
Pseudo Nym@kristinHenry @film_girl @paul The primary value I see in quote-posts, is the ability to add commentary/context. If I really need to, I can "copy link" and paste it.
Like this:
https://mastodon.social/@film_girl/109759044241043089
So I get the primary value, commentary, for two addition taps.
But while I see the utility, I agree with the current Mastodon way, that twitter-style quote-tooting, on balance, is a net negative.
Engage and reply to the original poster is better.
Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)@paul @film_girl I kinda like an idea I saw a while ago, that we should replace QTs with a RT of the original with a specific reply in-line below it.
That'd give the original post more prominence and would hopefully encourage people to read the original neutrally *before* they see the reply of the re-poster.
Jesse@uliwitness @paul @film_girl I like this too, though there are some downsides as noted by @hildabast in this convo https://mastodon.social/@misc/109677887701292864
Mike Cohen
Keith Wilson@uliwitness @paul @film_girl Here’s a proposal for a #QuoteReply (or Boost-and-Reply) function: https://fediphilosophy.org/@keithwilson/109456249890156614.
This avoids some of the worst aspects of QTs while remaining compatible with the existing Mastodon API since you can already boost a reply along with the original toot. All that’s needed from clients is to display both together in the timeline (which @elk already does) and a way to boost-and-reply to a toot as a single action; e.g. via a long press on the ‘boost’ button. Bingo!
Keith Wilson (@[email protected])
The negative aspects of #QuoteTweets could be fixed by making them work more like replies. A #QuoteReply, if you will. Instead of appearing as a new toot unconnected with the original, the original toot would be boosted with a comment added that is shown both to followers and, crucially, the original poster. Subsequent replies would then go to both in the usual way so that the conversation is not forked. (The same should also happen with regular boosts IMO.) #Mastodon #UX #QuoteToot #noxp
David Rolfe@paul Using this process would maybe fix the timeline height issue too, because you'd be requesting the real original and the boosted-reply and aligning them on the client.
@paul @film_girl So I actually kind of appreciate the adaptation, personally. I think that extra bit of friction forces just a little more thoughtfulness. Still in favor of allowing them, but there's something to be said for limitations. Even this comment would have been better had it been capped at 140 characters.
ilyess@paul @film_girl It looks like it’s under consideration: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109623891328707089
Chris Morrell@paul @film_girl I’ve been messing with a userland alternative using open graph/oEmbed tags. Real QT’s would be better, but it’s something.
I’m still messing with the right tag combo to make it render best across the most clients. Looks great in ivory, but not everywhere else.
https://qt.any.dev/https://mastodon.social/@film_girl/109759044241043089
Post by Christina Warren
Yales@paul I think a potential client-side solution for now would be to render links to other posts as one would have rendered a quote post. Current link preview to other Mastodon posts isn’t great.
And add a button that composes a new post with the link already added.
Edit: oops just saw this has already been suggested
Mike Beasley@film_girl the idea that replying directly to someone and then boosting yourself somehow prevents abuse is goofy at best. it’s potentially more abusive since the replies are direct and it’s also just tacky.
tomakoon@MikeBeas @film_girl I think it would actually prevent some abuse.
In the abusive cases at hand, quoting is a coward move at best. With a direct reply, you have to own your words. What is more abusive? Saying something to someone in their back or saying it to their faces?
@tomakoon there’s no reason to think a person will not see a quote. They get notifications for them in the main Twitter app. No reason they couldn’t here.
Devon Dundee@film_girl I’m thankful that some clients (like Ice Cubes and Mona) are implementing their own quote functionality as a stopgap, and I hope every client eventually does the same. Would be better as a platform-wide feature, though.
Ricky Mondello@film_girl I find it very hard to say a lot of what I want to say without using another post as a starting point.
isaiah@rmondello @film_girl @cdf1982 same. that’s it exactly!!!
i get the whole big thing about QTs — and i’m happy for many of the strong mastodon opinions. those opinions are saving our collective asses from the fascist billionaire hellsite right now. but, like… babies and bathwater, you know???!!!
i hope we somehow find a nice balance.
:-)
Cesare Forelli@isaiah @rmondello @film_girl Hopefully the only two things annoying about Mastodon (aforementioned lack of QTs and seeing the same boosts 20 times) can be fixed client-side, now that these kind of apps are flourishing
Trifster 
@film_girl was there a form of quote tweeting way back at twitter inception? I mean retweeting was just RT + [@name] + paste of their tweet. 🤔
@trifster yeah, that’s what it was. You’d put your comment and the. QT or RT the person and what they said.
n3wjack@film_girl iirc the feature is being reconsidered, so it might be added in the future
Karissa Bell@film_girl ice cubes has it (I know it’s not the same yet..)
@karissabe It does and it looks great. Wish it showed up in all views and not just the timeline! Also, KB! Yay!!
@film_girl honestly the hardest thing for me rn is breaking the muscle memory of compulsively scrolling Twitter.. (even though things here are way more chill)
Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱@film_girl Near as I can tell the whole “quote-tweeting is a significant driver of abuse” thing is taken as a given but has never been quantified.
It’s not clear to me that the kinds of people who’ve received abuse-by-QT wouldn’t have received similar abuse without it, all other things being equal.
@jeff @film_girl And the relative lack of abuse on Mastodon has, I suspect, less to do with this particular missing feature than the kinds of people who populated it early on coupled with the lack of an engagement-chasing algorithm surfacing rage-bait and superior moderation functionality/culture.
@jeff I completely agree.
Collin Donnell@jeff @film_girl if anything I’m pretty sure the evidence there that exists showed that it is not a driver of abuse.
SirJohnCard@film_girl Definitely a missed feature. Quote tweeting is my go to, and way preferred over a standard RT. Still adjusting to the weird growing pains on the elephant app.
Kevin Whalen 
@film_girl The @MonaApp supports quote posts.
Jon Maddox
Warner Crocker
Steven Barnhart@film_girl that’s a lot of what happens today. Punishing everyone for the actions of a few. Also lots of people here who think they are in charge lol.
Jemal Cole Loves Each of You@film_girl absolutely correct.
rmquist@film_girl +1 (or 1000) ...
Leon Cowle@film_girl Check out Re:Toot app. Works super well and is a very good next-best-thing.
re_chief@film_girl It just feels like a really essential part of the Twitter-esque experience. I mostly quote-tweeted to participate in memes and to add my perspective to others’ posts, and I often instinctively try to quote-tweet on here to do the same thing and then have a wistful “ohh… right” experience when I remember I can’t
@re_chief it’s a really important thing that was started by Twitter users and it then became adopted by the platform. And it’s good! Hope the main Mastodon instances implement it in the future.
Wesley Moore@film_girl https://apps.apple.com/us/app/re-toot/id1661697436 is one workaround at the moment
Re: Toot
Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post,…
Joe Schmitt@film_girl not building the feature because it’ll be abused is nonsensical. In that case we shouldn’t have boosts or replies either.
Instead of worrying if QT’s will be used for abuse, we should focus on building better moderation tools (like opting out of being quoted)
Anthony@film_girl That’s why we have @simonbs’s Re: Toot.