Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse
Mastodon is officially rolling out quote posts. Starting next week, you’ll see an option to quote another user by selecting the repost — or “boost” — button, allowing you to add your thoughts to someone else’s post.
The decentralized platform initially planned not to launch quote posts over concerns that they could be used for harassment or to take someone out of context. Mastodon reversed this decision in February, saying a lack of quote posts might discourage people from joining the fediverse.
https://www.theverge.com/news/777067/mastodon-quote-posts-fediverse-launchOpen linkView original on lemmy.nz222
Comments36
rolling out to Mastodon*
You have to standardize it to roll that to the fediverse.
Mastodon is a subset of the fediverse.
If something is in Mastodon, it’s in the fediverse.
It's ALREADY in the fediverse with Misskey, Lemmy, and other APub software i don't know.
Lemmy still doesn't have crossposts as far as I know
It does
Kinda...
Sharkey already has quote posts.
(Almost) all services (except Mastodon) have had quote posts for years/decades.
(Sharkey, Misskey, Friendica, Hubzilla, Pleroma, Akkoma, etc.)
Sharkey, misskeys, pleroma, akkoma, wafrn and friendica already have quotes.
I thought Misskey and its forks already supported quote posts?
They already have quotes.
Akkoma, Misskey and alike have had quote posts for ages now
It is likely most other software will be able to consume them.
This highlights what I believe to be a poor choice in the design of BlueSky's AT Protocol; ActivityPub software is usually liberal in what it accepts and displays, while ATProto enforces schemas ("lexicon").
It usually comes down to a difference in vision, the fediverses schtick is that you can follow Reddit from Twitter or whatever, whereas on atproto you use a different appview for different formats, like frontpage.fyi for links, and whtwnd.net for blogging.
It's a difference in vision, but I don't like BlueSky's vision here.
Combining the Reddit-like and Twitter-like experiences in one place is a little awkward, but following a blog or a Youtube-like from a Twitter-like isn't. Having the option to switch to a more optimal appview is great, but realistically a lot more people would follow a blog from BlueSky than would use their BlueSky identity to sign into WhiteWind.
Well, it's a bit more than just using their identity to sign in, data is also stored on their PDS.
It's entirely possible to make a server that accepts several different lexicons, wafrn plans on doing this for articles.
When a substantial fraction of users are actually using an appview with that trait, that will be great.
Sure, but its not a fault of the protocol itself. You could easily choose to discard
articleornoteobjects on ActivityPub.You can write software to filter on arbitrary criteria with ActivityPub, or email, or IRC, or virtually any other protocol. My point is that ATProto is designed to actively encourage it, and the flagship implementation does so. Subtle hints in interfaces have a big impact on how people, including developers use software.
FWIW this was always an ideological choice, not a technical one. Masto users saw how quote-posts were used on other platforms to generate harassment, doxxing, dogpiling, etc. and chose not to include the feature. It's hard to say whether it has had a cooling effect on those, but it seems like most people on Masto consider the benefits to outweigh the costs.
This took way too long. But nice that it's finally here.
It’s not called mastodon for nothing 🤷♂️
Quotes have been on the fediverse for ages. Mastodon is just catching up.
I hope it's all compatible with the other platforms' quote post feature.
Heck yeah
I thought it was already there and had been there for a while?
They added support to view quote posts before they added the ability to create quote posts
There's been a "boost" button for a while. I don't know how long though. I haven't tried using it. But I've seen some posts boosted by other users of that instance.
Boost is not the same thing as quote posting. Boost is like retweet. A quote post is like when you make a post that references someone else's post, it looks similar to including a screenshot of their post in your own post, except it's a real link.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/09/introducing-quote-posts/
Aha, thanks, I didn't realize boosting and quoting weren't the same. I'm not very familiar with this stuff.
Not on Mastodon. Some of the other fedi microblog platforms have had it, though.
mathstodon.xyz has it. I had thought that was a mastodon instance but maybe it's something different.
Maybe GlitchSock (Mastodon fork)?
That's definitely a Fediverse software name
How do those of us who loathe the horrific and proven bad idea of quote posts, and also refuse to use Mastodon, opt out of this terrible misfeature? Will blocking anyone who quote posts me and defederating from their instance remove the quote?
So part of the approach they're using is this idea of permissions (at a technical level, it's using the permission system that GoToSocial has been innovating on).
So, theoretically, they should not be able to quote-post you until given the green light from you.
I've noticed that quote-posts which come across my Mastodon timeline from implementations which don't use this permissions system have now been displaying the quoted post as just the message, "This post is pending approval from the original author," (I expect since most previously-existing implementations of the feature didn't use said permission system, any).
Perfect! Thanks for the info!