#Mastodon is being more blatant—it will add quote posts.
This will piss some people off but frankly, this has been in the works for years.
To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse.
And actually, platforms like #Misskey, #Akkoma, and #Friendica have had that feature for years, and hardly anyone using those platforms has ever complained.
In fact, I use quote posts every day. No one’s complained to me about my use of quote posts.
Nevertheless, Mastodon is doing the right thing—and it takes serious courage to tell the Fedi Gatekeepers that this will happen. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it’s a change that needed to happen.
blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/…
Bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon
Sharing our thinking and progress on bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon, with a goal to create a safe and respectful space for everyone.Mastodon Blog
I prefer #SocialWeb to #Fediverse because these imply two entirely different things.
Fediverse implies an enclosed space for which you’re either “in” or “out”. Which is why the Fediverse attracts to many HOA-type people.
In contrast, Social Web presents an effort to supplement a space that already exists, and for which everyone is already included.
Remember, the Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers in Auschwitz.
It started with politicians dividing the people with “us vs. them”.
It started with intolerance and hate speech.
It started when people stopped caring, became desensitized, and turned a blind eye.
Remember.
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Now livestreaming at joystick.tv/u/toplesstopics !
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@Lilith111
Cowardly killer?
Folk Hero?
Or can someone be two things at once?
The most balanced think piece I've come across...from the article:
"Obviously, an explanation is not a justification. Nothing justifies murder. I see it as a primal scream from a society that has had enough. I view it as a warning."☠️ 🇺🇸 ☠️
ekathimerini.com/opinion/12562…
A collective primal scream and the murder of Brian Thompson
First in his class, valedictorian, Ivy League top university graduate, instructor at Stanford, private high school attendee, handsome, friendly, hailing from a very wealthy and successful family. And a murderer, with no previous criminal record.Tenia Christopoulos (ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΕΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΕΙΣ ΜΟΝΟΠΡΟΣΩΠΗ Α.Ε. Εθν.Μακαρίου & Φαληρέως 2)
@clintruin @Lilith111
I find it strange that certain people want us to believe that they have a problem with murder, but not mass murder.
I have not seen any of those who call Luigi a murderer express the tiniest but of sympathy for the tens of thousands of preventable deaths caused every year by our health insurance industry. What about the children of the people killed by health insurers? Or do those lives not matter?
Big Tech is using the nationalism card. When the EU wants to regulate American companies and fines them when they break the rules, then they want to see that as attacking American companies.
What does it then mean when the DOJ in the US wants to regulate Big Tech and fines them for breaking the rules?
The reality is that we need regulation. Big Tech has gotten away with too much. They have grown too powerful. They are doing too much damage.
Choose smaller companies, when you can. Take a stand.
#Windows #Macos #Linux #fediverse #Mastodon #Regulation #Politics #Vivaldi
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Did you know about Sepia Search, our search engine for #PeerTube?
With #SepiaSearch, you can find out most of videos, channels and playlists available on PeerTube!
Sepia Search
A search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, developed by FramasoftSepia Search
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A Twitter post by John Sipher ([@]johnsipher.bsky.social) states: "On 21 March 1933 Adolf Hitler was officially sworn in as chancellor of Germany. The same day he pardoned 8,000 Nazis, who had committed violent acts, starting with the failed Hitler coup on 8 November 1923." A profile picture of John Sipher is shown to the left, and a "Following" button is to the right.
Provided by @altbot, generated using Gemini
I'm actually not sure I'll be able to premiere my new "Goodbye" YouTube " video that I spent all week furiously editing because I'm still fresh off another YouTube ban of a fully-clothed video of me simply talking to the camera as" sexually explicit nudity," which is just *chef's kiss* irony. I can at least show the YouTube-safe version on Twitch since I scraped out all nipples, even male nipples, because I'm banned to a degree that nobody else faces.
man I'm so close to just not even caring anymore about if my post get banned on mainstream social media. I'll just post them to decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Peertube, and if no one watches them, so be it, but at least I won't have to be holding my breath waiting for a fresh ban 🙃
"American solutions to American problems"
#freeLuigi #luigi #neverAgain #neverAgainIsNow #revolution #resist #USPol
I don't know what that is an am not really at liberty to physically take part in resistance protests right now (my identity is too easily found and I have kids to worry about) so not really 😅 but I'm glad to hear others are organizing!
Last year at the nature reserve
Some photos from my various walks around the local nature reserve last year
It doesn't natter what the alt right or media claims, Elon Musk did a sieg heil salute.
And it matters that he did that. He is the richest person on this planet and now has major stakes in the US government
So yes, having neo-nazi's run one of the worlds leading countries does matter a lot
Call the beast for what it is
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I want to update it to what I used on my t-shirt design--"ban nazis not nipples"
Looking for instance recommendations by and for PoC, for some people I've been talking to who balked at using mastodon years ago because at that time they experienced a lot of "white liberal" racism here.
(I'm nervous I'll be perceived as racist for even asking this... But I'm not sure how else to frame this request)
American far-right plutocrats are now targeting Wikipedia because it's a platform they don't control.
The Wikimedia Foundation is an invaluable non-profit organisation that is not for sale. Please help keeping it that way by making a donation - big or small:
donate.wikimedia.org
Make your donation now - Wikimedia Foundation
Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reach of Wikipedia and its sister projects.donate.wikimedia.org
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BeAware
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •with some of their wording, I was a bit worried that this would allow the Fedi Mafia/HOA/Fedi Gatekeepers to harass devs and simply stop people like us from calling them out by linking to them.
Thankfully, a dev said they currently aren't thinking of tying "linking a post" to quote posts.
Their wording made it come off that way because that's how Threads does Quote Posts.
If you're on Threads and wanna link to another post, it's automatically a quote post. Someone limits who can quote post? You're not linking to their post.
Obviously even if they did that, it wouldn't effect you because you're on Akkoma, but it did have me worried for a bit.😬
Josh
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Josh • • •MJ Ray
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr I saw a study that said specifically there is no correlation. That study was made in 2022. Unfortunately, I can’t find that specific study so I’m not going to cite it.
Whatever the case, though, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims.
Regarding what you saw on Twitter, that’s easily explainable: Twitter’s algorithm was incentivized to show you outrageous content. It’s unlikely that quotes caused dogpiles – it was more likely due to the feed algorithm.
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Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •@mjr Actually, I found a reference to the study:
absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/…
Quote Tweeting: Over 30 Studies Dispel Some Myths - Absolutely Maybe
Hilda Bastian (Absolutely Maybe)MJ Ray
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •yes, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims. Those claiming quote posts are safe should prove it.
I'm pretty sure Twitter quote posts were added way back when we still had chronological feeds and they were a problem pretty much as soon as people realised they didn't count as mentions.
Chris Trottier
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr No one is claiming that quote posts are safe. The claim is that there’s no evidence that they’re more unsafe than other social media features.
Tell me why hashtags are more safe than quote posts. Hashtags, just like quote posts, increase visibility of messages on social media. Yet no one is asking that hashtags be removed as a feature because they’re abusive.
Adam
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr
From the linked article:
In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:
-You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all.
-You will be notified when someone quotes you.
-You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time.
We also want to build a tight integration for Quote Posts with the reporting functionality, to help people to feel more safe.
@atomicpoet
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Chris Trottier
in reply to Adam • • •@breakfastmtn @mjr This actually makes quote posts safer than replies.
I would love to lock a thread if I feel they’re attracting abuse. Or even remove comments if they’re toxic. However, Mastodon doesn’t allow this right now.
I’ve requested comment controls for years, and I have no update on whether they plan to do anything about implementing that.
Ryan Lounsbury
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier
in reply to Ryan Lounsbury • • •Ryan Lounsbury
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Ryan Lounsbury • • •Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@tchambers
“To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse. “
there is no conclusive data; that’s not the same as saying there is no data whatsoever….
Chris Trottier
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@UlrikeHahn @tchambers What you’re quoting implies that culture has a bigger effect on incivility. Which seems pretty common sense to me.
Practically speaking, though, what’s your actual stance on quote posts?
Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@UlrikeHahn @tchambers
There's been a lot of study on this, and QTs just do not contribute significantly to harassment and abuse. But even if they did, the affordances here are different. Followers-only replies are a *much* larger concern than quote posts.
absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/…
Quote Tweeting: Over 30 Studies Dispel Some Myths - Absolutely Maybe
Hilda Bastian (Absolutely Maybe)Mark likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers Can you tell me a little bit more about the phenomenon of followers-only posts being used for abuse?
Is it similar to how Discord is used for pile-ons? Or is it something else entirely?
Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •1. The target posts anything at all
2. The harasser replies with followers-only visibility. The reply is visible to the OP, and the crowd of other abusers that follow the first abuser, but no one else. Not even the mods on OP's server
3. The crowd of other abusers pile on, invisible
4. Everyone else gas lights OP about it, saying they've never seen this abuse and so it must be made up, and/or OP's fault.
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Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Yeah. The most pernicious harassment is coordinated off-platform. But it's still not great that mastodon (and many other backends) created this channel to be jerks in secret.
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Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus Yep, three years ago, I put in a feature request on Mastodon for comment controls. It’s pretty common sense to have since, yeah, it would cut down on abuse drastically. Haven’t heard anything back from Mastodon, but I certainly got a lot of angry people who demand that this never be implemented.
At the very least, you should be able to opt out of receiving comments. Still not here, but at least Mastodon allows you to opt out of quote posts. Now if only they would allow this for comments.
Security Writer
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers I call it abuse multi-threading.
You can be abused in broad daylight without a soul seeing it, from multiple sources.
Doesn’t get reported properly as nobody sees it but you. Doesn’t trigger any thresholds.
Massively open to widespread abuse and really skews people’s optics of the situation.
A lot like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia etc. online generally (“I don’t see it, so it doesn’t happen), but it’s built right into the Mastodon functionally to further enable it.
I see its intended functionality, but I don’t think you should be able to reply with followers only.
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