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Renaud Chaput

I said it several times, but with Ivory's latest announcement, let me repeat it: we (the Mastodon team) are working on implementing Quote Posts. This is a much more complex feature than showing a preview for a link to a post, which is done at the moment by multiple clients.

It is a complex task and we have been working on defining the feature and the protocol-level details for some time. We are moving forward, and there are fewer hard questions to answers, but progress is there.

13 February at 17:54 | Open on oisaur.com
62 comments
El Duvelle

@renchap very cool! Looking forward to it being available to all :)

13 February at 17:56 | Open on neuromatch.social
Renaud Chaput

Once implemented, you can expect proper support in the API, web frontend, and the official mobile clients (that we develop), and we intend to publish the API details in advance so any other client can support them.
We will also be publishing FEPs to ensure that this becomes a standard that can be supported by every ActivityPub implementation.
It will (if all goes fine) support notifications when someone quotes you, as well as controlling who can quote your posts (everyone, nobody, mutuals…)

13 February at 17:56 | Open on oisaur.com
Renaud Chaput

Here are a sample of the hard questions we need to have answers for:
- Can you quote a post when replying to someone
- Is pasting a link into a post quoting? What if there are multiple posts linked?
- How to handle implementations, instances or clients not supporting quote posts
- How does this interact with moderation? Blocking?
- How do we handle ActivityPub implementations with slightly different formats, like if they support quoting multiple posts in the same status?

13 February at 18:03 | Open on oisaur.com
Tom

@renchap Whatever the decision, pasting multiple links of post will be possible, so an unified behaviour seems preferable, no?

13 February at 18:09 | Open on mamot.fr
Brian Hawthorne

@renchap @GottaLaff Protocolbros overthinking it as usual. The functionality provided by most mastodon apps of just showing the post preview for links to posts is really all we are asking for. I don’t see any reason to change the protocol. Just change the UI in your apps to support previews of linked posts like nearly everyone other than Mastodon gGmbH does and we will be happy. I’ve been using in Mona for at least a year, and have not needed answers to any of those questions.

13 February at 18:12 | Open on infosec.exchange
Merlin04

@bhawthorne @renchap @GottaLaff I can imagine getting notifications when someone quotes your post is useful though? seems to be what most of this complexity is from and I can understand why if they're already making a change like this to the mastodon feature set that they want to implement it with this feature

13 February at 18:23 | Open on queer.party
Mayank

@renchap QT doesn't have to be this super complex thing. link previews are already good enough for 99% use cases.

here are the answers to your questions:
- yes.
- yes. show upto three, or even just show the first one 🤷
- show a regular link.
- same as if looking at the quoted post directly.
- not sure. this might be the one question that legitimately seems hard

13 February at 18:14 | Open on hachyderm.io
Roni Laukkarinen

@renchap My thoughts:

- Can you quote a post when replying to someone

Yes.

- Is pasting a link into a post quoting? What if there are multiple posts linked?

Yes. Twitter, Threads and Bluesky ”create” the ”embedded post preview” once you paste the link in the compose form. This behavior is well accepted and expected I presume.

- How to handle implementations, instances or clients not supporting quote posts

Then the posts show up just links.

- How does this interact with moderation? Blocking?

The quote post becomes unavailable once blocked, ”The quoted post is not available”.

As for privacy and freedom of choice in general: Ideally there should be a setting that lets you choose whether you want your posts to be quoted but I think the current privacy settings could be used for this.

- How do we handle ActivityPub implementations with slightly different formats, like if they support quoting multiple posts in the same status?

This is the only challenging question I suppose. The best option could be to show just one quote post and rest of them as links.

@renchap My thoughts:

- Can you quote a post when replying to someone

Yes.

- Is pasting a link into a post quoting? What if there are multiple posts linked?

Yes. Twitter, Threads and Bluesky ”create” the ”embedded post preview” once you paste the link in the compose form. This behavior is well accepted and expected I presume.

13 February at 18:28 | Open on mementomori.social
Dana Fried

@rolle @renchap

> The quote post becomes unavailable once blocked, ”The quoted post is not available”.

The problem is: for whom? How is this enforced?

Ideally, if use A quotes user B and user B blocks user A, then the quote post goes away, or the link becomes completely invalid.

Otherwise users C, D, E, etc. who view user A's post can still click through the link and harass the person. This was a serious problem on Twitter.

13 February at 19:39 | Open on mastodon.social
Roni Laukkarinen

@tess @renchap That is something that can be improved here if we want to continue making Mastodon ”healthier” plave. If I block user A who has quoted me, that should always invalidate all past, present and future quotes from me by user A, the same way that user can no longer view or interact with any of my posts when blocked. So ideally the quoted post would become unavailable for everyone. The other users can of course choose to ask or circumvent this in other ways. The link technically would be left intact so not sure how it would work anyway 🤔 Food for thought.

@tess @renchap That is something that can be improved here if we want to continue making Mastodon ”healthier” plave. If I block user A who has quoted me, that should always invalidate all past, present and future quotes from me by user A, the same way that user can no longer view or interact with any of my posts when blocked. So ideally the quoted post would become unavailable for everyone. The other users can of course choose to ask or circumvent this in other ways. The link technically would be...

13 February at 20:28 | Open on mementomori.social
Dana Fried

@rolle @renchap perhaps if the link was encrypted and went through the server? There has to be a way to do it; whether it's practical or efficient is another question.

13 February at 20:37 | Open on mastodon.social
Renaud Chaput

@tess @rolle This is one of the problems, but we have ideas. With a federated network this is really hard to solve, and you cant really ensure that a bad actor with custom code will do things properly.

13 February at 20:41 | Open on oisaur.com
Dana Fried

@renchap @rolle I mean, you can always just post a hard link to a public post, or screenshot.

The big thing is to make the easy path the one with the protections, which forces people to be actively malicious instead of just casually cruel, and also to make the easy path nudge people towards prosocial behavior.

This is also why I continue to advocate for bottom text on QBs, because it encourages "yes, and..." and discourages "hey look at this asshole".

13 February at 21:03 | Open on mastodon.social
Renaud Chaput

@tess @rolle We are currently leaning toward having the quoted post on top, yes. And we agree that the goal is to not make it easy to dunk on people. It will still be possible (same as the current state), but we dont want to make it easier or more effective.

13 February at 21:05 | Open on oisaur.com
Dana Fried

@renchap @rolle

Thank you so much. I appreciate that y'all are not just aping what other platforms do, but are trying to do what's best for the folks who spend time on fedi.

❤️

13 February at 21:11 | Open on mastodon.social
Renaud Chaput

To answer some common questions I get:

Yes, we want to have proper safety features for Quote Posts. We got enough feedback from Xitter to know how they can be used for harassment. Maybe this is not a concert to you, but it is for us.

Yes, it takes time, but we are a very small team, with only one full-time developer for the backend. At the moment, handling the day-to-day (reviews, bug fixes, security) is already more than what we can handle, so everything takes more time that we would like.

13 February at 18:33 | Open on oisaur.com
Renaud Chaput

As always, you can help by contributing, either:
- with code, we are mostly looking for people able to contribute a "large” features after getting guidance from us
- with money, by donating to the project, which allows us to hire more people: joinmastodon.org/sponsors

13 February at 18:35 | Open on oisaur.com
Old Hippie Ⓥ
Renaud Chaput

@old_hippie Backend is Ruby on Rails, frontend is (old) React + Redux

13 February at 20:55 | Open on oisaur.com
༺NIX༻

@renchap @old_hippie any chance someone will be hired to focus on rewriting it on a more used language so development can be more efficient moving forward?

13 February at 21:21 | Open on merveilles.town
Old Hippie Ⓥ

@renchap That's not one I have in my toolbox. I'll donate some money instead.

13 February at 21:29 | Open on veganism.social
Itan
flere-imsaho

@renchap are you going to ignore the de facto standard implemented already in other fedi software or do you plan to support it? if yes, how?

13 February at 19:34 | Open on circumstances.run
Ulrike Hahn

@renchap am appreciating the thoughtful approach!

13 February at 20:11 | Open on fediscience.org
Lien Rag

@renchap

It's not a concert for me, but apparently it'll be music to the ears of many...

13 February at 18:35 | Open on mastodon.tedomum.net
Potung Thul

@renchap
Thank you to you and your team for the substantial contribution to social functioning of the internet.

#Mastodon

13 February at 18:45 | Open on toot.io
E. Ernst eest9 Steinhammer

@renchap What safety features do you have in mind? I think the dynamic this sets in motion won't really be receptive to features 🤨

13 February at 19:14 | Open on chaos.social
Deborah Hartmann Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦

@renchap thank you for the update, and for applying your collective talent to doing it well. It's appreciated 🙏

13 February at 19:22 | Open on mstdn.ca
realcaseyrollins
@renchap @renchap
Why is this taking so much longer for #Mastodon to implement than #rebased
13 February at 18:56 | Open on social.teci.world
Puffer

@renchap Please allow for a user to mute another user’s quote post in the same way you can mute their boosts. Quote post can essentially act as a boosting mechanism for some people, and the only way to control it seeing content you didn’t follow for is to mute the quoter.

13 February at 19:07 | Open on esoteric.party
Alex Barredo 📉

@renchap i was going to ask about this. Very thoughtful. Keep it up

13 February at 21:09 | Open on mastodon.social
Andreas

@renchap What’s the rationale on letting posters control who can quote them?
If I want to quote someone, I’ll make a screenshot if everything else fails.
I don’t see the point of not offering the option to quote.

13 February at 18:08 | Open on rheinneckar.social
Renaud Chaput

@amayer Quote Posts can (and will) be used for harassment and make it much more impactful than when people use a link (without a preview of the quoted post) or a screenshot.

13 February at 18:11 | Open on oisaur.com
Andreas

@renchap If you say so …

How about a link AND a screenshot?

Oh well.

13 February at 18:15 | Open on rheinneckar.social
Carbonara based life form 👽

@amayer @renchap ~= "you can't stop people from murdering so why try"

there's a concept in cybersecurity about imposing cost on an attacker

in order to reduce harassment of someone, it would be useful to increase the number of steps.

13 February at 19:19 | Open on tech.lgbt
Paul Haddad :tapbots_logo:

@renchap as I've probably mentioned before we'll switch over to official quoting as soon as its available.

13 February at 18:11 | Open on tapbots.social
mercurial idiot 🌒

@renchap ooh, the controlling thing seems great. Probably should be opt-in seeing how many people were against Quote-Toots.

13 February at 18:20 | Open on infosec.space
Shannon Clark

@renchap how do you plan on handling edits to a post that has been quoted?

(Ie I make a post. Someone quotes it. I edit the post. What is/should be shown in the quoted post?)

It is not uncommon or perhaps even surprising that the person quoting a post might be pointing out something that results in a later edit of a post or at least no longer relates to the later edited post

I don’t have an easy answer. Perhaps quote to a specific version of a post & show that newer versions exist?

13 February at 18:27 | Open on mastodon.social
Rora Borealis

@renchap I can imagine the ways it might start to get complicated. Thanks for all of your work!

13 February at 17:59 | Open on tech.lgbt
bapt :smug:

@renchap J'ai hâte ! Je sais que c'est dur de donner des deadlines, et je sais que c'est déjà sur la roadmap, mais c'est cool d'avoir la confirmation que c'est toujours d'actualité et que ça avance, merci ! 🫶

13 February at 18:01 | Open on mastodon.social
DELETED

@renchap Why reinvent the wheel? On all other platforms it's a preview of the post and that's fine

13 February at 18:04 | Open on c.im
Bryan Schuetz

@emic @renchap "Why reinvent the wheel?"

My friend, which would you rather drive on?
13 February at 18:13 | Open on indieweb.social
Brendan Jones

@emic @renchap go read the extensive discussion on the Github issue requesting quote posts if you'd like to understand the concerns people have about them, and why people want some controls on them.

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i

13 February at 20:54 | Open on fosstodon.org
the esoteric programmer

@renchap would the implementation work with the existing social networking platforms which have quotes, for example friendica?

13 February at 18:09 | Open on social.stealthy.club
TopKnot

@renchap

Thanks for moving forward with this difficult task.

13 February at 18:15 | Open on mas.to
Stefan Bohacek

@renchap Having at least a better preview would be a good first step while the other implementation details are being worked on.

13 February at 18:23 | Open on stefanbohacek.online
Jupiter Rowland
@Stefan Bohacek @Renaud Chaput Which would also help ensure that Mastodon's quote-post feature will remain compatible with what almost all the rest of the Fediverse already has.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #QuotePosts #QuoteTweets #QuoteToots #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares
13 February at 19:11 | Open on hub.netzgemeinde.eu
Chris Real

@renchap

If you have problems with this, maybe it's for a good reason.

Merely reproducing twitter is likely to reproduce its worst flaws. Even if you -can- do it—should you?

It's the hardest of these questions . . .

13 February at 18:43 | Open on kolektiva.social
Anders Eknert

@_chris_real he’s literally describing how QTs are different from twitter, and the problems of making that work, so speaking of “reproducing” that is rather disingenuous.

13 February at 18:59 | Open on hachyderm.io
MooMoo the Cat
sandywb14

@renchap Thank you for the endless refining. I may not understand it, but I appreciate the foresight and work it takes to design and implement. ❤️

13 February at 18:53 | Open on dftba.club
Emma Builds 🚀

@renchap is there a link to a page that has this outlined, or a ticket?

13 February at 18:58 | Open on orbital.horse
Malte Engeler
Thomas 🔭✨

@renchap Wish I could quote this! :D

Really looking forward to the feature!

13 February at 19:09 | Open on hachyderm.io
Paul Sutton

@renchap

You are doing a fantastic job.

13 February at 19:38 | Open on qoto.org
zıəs uɐɟəʇs ✪

@renchap meanwhile, what ivory implemented is imo positive and much better than having to manually copy and paste links…

13 February at 20:17 | Open on mastodon.social
Kevin Russell

@renchap

I am grateful for your efforts, the efforts of the contributing community, and for this note about progress.

13 February at 20:41 | Open on mstdn.social
Doug Grinbergs

@renchap With all due respect for well-intentioned talented app developers trying to kludge twitter-like quote post in their Mastodon apps, perhaps they might instead pitch in, get on GitHub, help research, answer the tough *platform*, protocol questions, and perhaps discover some others worth asking?😉🙏🤘✌️🖖

13 February at 20:54 | Open on mstdn.social
Doug Grinbergs

@renchap re: quote posting, are we forever stuck with top posting☹️😡 or can we make it logical chronological?😉✌️

To wit, classic email example from us old-timers:
>Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>>Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>>>Top-posting.
>>>>What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

13 February at 21:00 | Open on mstdn.social
Renaud Chaput

@ShutterbugDoug For now, we are leaning to having the quoted post on top, then your message below it

13 February at 21:02 | Open on oisaur.com
Alex Gleason
@renchap Did you know Fedibird implemented quote posts on August 19, 2021? That was 908 days ago, 21,792 hours ago, 1,307,520 minutes ago, or 78,451,200 seconds ago.

See here: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/compare/main...fedibird:mastodon:main

It was actually pretty easy to cherry-pick these commits into Truth Social. It took about 1 hour.
@renchap Did you know Fedibird implemented quote posts on August 19, 2021? That was 908 days ago, 21,792 hours ago, 1,307,520 minutes ago, or 78,451,200 seconds ago.

See here: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/compare/main...fedibird:mastodon:main
14 February at 0:12 | Open on gleasonator.com
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