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I don't feel as strongly about quote posts as I did in 2018. Personally, I am not a fan, but there is clearly a lot of demand for it. We're considering it.

FediTips has moved!

@Gargron

Demand doesn't necessarily mean something is a good idea though?

There's a lot of demand for centralisation, but that would be a really bad idea.

@Eetschrijver @feditips @Gargron same. Demand comes also from what people were used to. That doesn't mean it is necessarely an improvement. There's a reason people are leaving the birdsite 😉

@feditips @Gargron precisely… if they’re fresh from the battleground and it’s all peaceful here in comparison… why is complaining about a quote post the first thing they try? I could not find one thing to demand or complain about at all when I arrived in Nov last year. “Sure is peaceful here, let’s screw it up, PRETTY PLEASE” is not really okay with a lot of us…

@feditips @Gargron what if there's a demand and is a good idea? :)

@vitordelucca

In this case, you'd promote it as a good idea, rather than saying you can't help but implement it because it was "in demand".

@gargron

@katzenberger @Gargron I mean, there's a demand because a lot of people think is a good idea.

@vitordelucca @feditips @Gargron That doesn't apply in this case. The idea is a very, very bad one.

@feditips @Gargron Is there really a high demand for centralization? People don't want to be isolated on their Mastodon instance, sure, but I don't really see anyone saying "make it into one server!"

@feditips @Gargron I agree. And I'm not yet invested enough in this as a platform to say for certain I'd stay, if they introduced one of the other place's worst features.

@feditips

@Gargron I mean, if you don't want to use it, then don't use it, right?

@deurman @Gargron

We aren't just individuals, we are all part of a community.

If the community turns toxic, we all suffer.

Features which encourage toxicity harm all of us, because they affect how people around us behave. Toxicity promotes aggression, suspicion and stress, it makes the world a nastier place to live in.

@feditips
@Gargron Honestly, I don't really see how it was used in such a toxic matter. I'm not saying it wasn't, just not my experience. That might also explain why I don't have such a hard stance against it. Then again, I didn't truly experience how toxic Twitter could be for myself up until recently. I never really posted or replied there tho, that might be why too. I just mainly watched some gaming news accounts and YouTubers and such. I never got into politics much there.

@deurman @feditips @Gargron There can be no doubt that if the goal is conversations, the ability to quote RT derailed what little remained of meaningful discourse on Twitter. The introduction of quote RTs opened the floodgates to controversy-led hot takes. The negative effects far outweigh the positives IMO.

As a side note, as with all software development, making what people ask for might not be the right move. What lies behind the requests for quote RTs on Mastodon?

@gloom303
@feditips @Gargron That's a fair point. Maybe we should try to look at why the people are for it want it and if there is another way to achieve that with less downsides.

@deurman @feditips @Gargron If I understood it correctly, many are requesting it to add context to their re-shares. This, in fairness, seems like a sensible request – I often look at my feed and wonder why I’m seeing certain posts (some clients display the context better than others).

@deurman @feditips @Gargron Also, quote RTs were (and are) used to create pile-ons and drive toxicity on Twitter. Just because you haven’t personally experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Ask basically any woman, person of color or member of a marginalized community what happens when they voice their opinions on Twitter and the hateful far-right/Redditsphere picks it up. It’s not pretty.

@gloom303
@feditips @Gargron True, that's why I also said that. I said that I didn't try to say that it wasn't the case, just that I, before this whole quote tweet in mastodon argument was a thing, wasn't aware that it was such a controversial feature. Doesn't mean that it isn't the case. Just that I wasn't personally aware of it until recently. If that was the idea my earlier reply gave off, I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention. Just an explanation for my personal opinion on it.

@deurman @feditips @Gargron (Note: HateLab was partially funded and supported by Twitter officially in 2020, however almost all references to it have been scrubbed or shortened in the official Twitter blog since the sale).

@deurman @feditips @Gargron a lot of accounts got big not by doing anything special but simply quote tweeting good content from others. That was a real problem there and will be here too. We will all need to opt out if/when it becomes a reality to keep engagement on our content with us, not some low effort quoter

@feditips @Gargron see, i would love to quote this and show people why i disagree

@feditips @Gargron I suspect QTs are worst when someone with a lot of followers/reach is “punching down” on someone without that audience … especially when an algorithm is likely to promote it even more. But either way, there’s no way to auto-ban “negative” QTs.
I wonder if the community could organically enforce a standard of etiquette with them? Like with spoilers? If an algorithm isn’t massively juicing the reach, seems like it could be called out & shamed into less of a problem?

@feditips @Gargron Odd analogy. Decentralization is the main structural aspect of the Fediverse and Mastodon, quote boosting is just a possible feature. And if the latter is abused by bad actors, moderation will be much better than on the other site; if a whole instance is a problem, defederation takes care of it - something impossible on Twitter. Not at all different from like now when users write abusive posts. QB won't make things worse and are good for context.

@feditips @Gargron You’re making a bad-faith, fallacious argument. Whether centralization would be good or bad has absolutely zero bearing on whether QTs would be good or bad.

@feditips
There is a lot of demand for feature parity between the web interface and the mobile clients, and doing so would also be a really good idea.

Sometimes things that are in demand *are* good things. Bringing up centralization serves no purpose in this discussion—it’s pure rhetoric.