Mastodon is finally planning to add quote posts with user controls and safety features

The Mastodon team has announced plans to introduce quote posts, a highly requested feature, to their decentralized social platform. Previously, Mastodon avoided implementing quote posts due to concerns over potential misuse, such as quoting out of context or facilitating harassment. This feature will allow users to share another's post with their own commentary, like it's already feasible on X and other social platforms.

The team acknowledges that when used respectfully, quote posts can enhance discussions and foster trust. They noted that the absence of this feature has deterred some users from joining the Fediverse, and they aim to “help people to transition away from proprietary, billionaire-owned social media to the open social web”.

The upcoming implementation will include user control over whether their posts can be quoted or not, notifications when being quoted, and the ability to withdraw posts from quotes. Additionally, Mastodon plans to integrate quote posts with reporting features to enhance user safety.

Given the lack of standardization for quote posts in the W3C ActivityPub implementations, Mastodon seeks to collaborate on creating a specification for interoperability across the Fediverse. The development of quote posts will take time, with progress updates to be shared by the team.