Mastodon is an open source, a decentralized alternative to X, which has launched a controversial feature by adding a quote post that will be launched next week. This feature allows users to quote someone else’s posts and reshare them with their own responses or comments, which is “Dunk“On X, users often laugh at others by responding to humor or insulting humor.
To address this, Mastodon said it is implementing quote posts with security controls.
The platform notes that these protections are designed to enable the quotation post to be used responsibly to “extend discussions, create new connections and amplify underrepresented voices.”
Mastodon provides users with several ways to control how to quote their posts. For beginners, the platform allows users to decide who can refer to them by settings that can change the default values. Here you can set who can quote your permissions by choosing between “Anyone”, “Follower”, or “Just Me”. Additionally, you can control the visibility of quote posts by setting it to publicly visible, followers only, or a setting called “Quiet Public” that makes quotes public but removes them from Mastodon’s searches, trends, and public schedules.
Users will also be able to gradually override their default settings by navigating to Visibility and Interaction Settings in the composer’s screen. This will be useful if you know you are going to say something controversial, or the attention of anyone who may be raising objections.
Additionally, users will control their posts, Mastodon blog posts about new features, even after being cited.
When someone quotes a post, the cited user is notified in the app, and they have the option to delete their original post from the other party’s quotation post. Accessible through the options menu (three dot icons). From this location, users can change their quote settings to resolve any future quotes for their posts. They can also block users to prevent them from seeing and citing their posts in the future.
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Support for quote posts will arrive first in the coming week to allow on larger Mastodon servers mastodon.online and mastodon.Social. It will then be used in Mastodon’s 4.5 software update.
To quote a post, you will find the new option under Boost in Mastodon (similar to X’s repost/forwarding feature). Since Fediverse or Open Social Web is a network of servers running different software, quote posts may not appear immediately and some platforms may not update to use Enable technical specification support after quotation support immediately.
