Mastodon rolls out quote posts with protections to prevent 'dunking' | TechCrunch

"Mastodon, an open source, decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out a somewhat controversial feature by adding quote posts, which will launch next week. The feature, which allows a user to quote someone else's post and re-share it with their own response or commentary, has contributed to a culture of " dunking " on X, where users often deride other people by responding with snark or insulting humor. To address this concern, Mastodon says it's implementing quote posts with safety controls."

"Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts can be quoted. For starters, the platform lets users decide who can quote them through a setting where you can change your defaults. Here, you can set the permissions for who can quote you by choosing between "Anyone," "Followers only," or "Just me." Additionally, you can control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be visible to the public, to followers only, or a setting called "quiet public," which makes the quotes public but removes them from Mastodon's search, trends, and public timeline."

"Users will also be able to override their default settings on a post-by-post basis, if need be, by navigating to the "Visibility and interaction settings" within the composer screen. This would be useful if you know you're about to say something controversial or anything that could attract unwanted attention from those with opposing views, for instance. Plus, users will have control of their posts even after they're quoted, the Mastodon blog post about the new feature explains. When someone quotes a post, the user being quoted is notified in the app, and they can choose to remove their original post from the other person's quote post."

Mastodon will introduce quote posts with built-in safety controls to limit snarky or abusive resharing. Users can set global quoting permissions to Anyone, Followers only, or Just me. Visibility controls include public, followers-only, and a quiet public mode that hides quotes from search, trends, and the public timeline. Users can override defaults per post via the composer’s Visibility and interaction settings to limit attention on controversial posts. Quoted users receive notifications and can remove their original post from another user's quote post, preserving control over their content while enabling amplification options.

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