Jupiter Rowland

2024-11-12 23:36:10

How the quote-post debate demonstrates that many Mastodon users know nothing about the Fediverse

One of the worst aspects of Mastodon's plans to introduce quote-posts with a switch:

You keep having to tell Mastodon users that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon. That (insert a long list of Fediverse server applications here¹) have had quote-posts from the beginning. That they're all in the Fediverse. That they're all fully federated with Mastodon. That they can all quote-post any Mastodon toot they can possibly receive or import. And that they will be able to quote-post any Mastodon toot they can in the future, regardless of Mastodon account settings.

Up until this point, they were fully, firmly convinced that they're 100% safe from quote-posts on Mastodon. Either because they could not for the lives of them imagine that anything in the Fediverse has them. Or simply because they "knew" up until this point that the Fediverse is Mastodon. And if Mastodon introduces an opt-out or opt-in switch, this switch will mean absolute, 100% water-tight safety from quote-posts.

But for the Fediverse outside of Mastodon, the quote-post switch will be completely useless. Again: These lots of Fediverse server apps have had quote-posts before Mastodon introduced them. They had quote-posts before Mastodon invented the opt-in or opt-out switch. I mean, at least two of them have had quote-posts since before Mastodon even existed! So how are they supposed to support a proprietary, non-standard, Mastodon-specific switch which probably won't be documented anywhere before Mastodon rolls out quote-posts?

I'll tell you what'll happen.

Mastodon users will deactivate quote-posts for their accounts or not activate them in the first place. Non-Mastodon users, not knowing about the status of that switch, will quote-post them regardless with zero resistance. Upon which these Mastodon users will shit brix. And they'll call for either blocking that obviously rogue Mastodon user instance-wide, or blocking that user's instance, or Fediblocking that user's instance.

At this point, someone else who is not on Mastodon either will chime in and tell them: That particular user is, in fact, not on Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. That user is on Friendica. No, Friendica is not a rogue Mastodon instance. Friendica is not Mastodon at all. No, Friendica isn't a Mastodon fork either. Friendica has nothing to do with Mastodon. In fact, Friendica is older than Mastodon. On Friendica, quote-posts are perfectly normal. Friendica has had quote-posts for longer than Mastodon has even existed. And so forth.

Cue the Mastodon user shitting brix again, foaming with anger and calling for a Fediblock of all of Friendica.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that if Mastodon's quote-post feature and the rest of the Fediverse disregarding it leads to more awareness of the non-Mastodon Fediverse and its non-Mastodon features on Mastodon, it will also lead to demands for being able to completely block everything that isn't Mastodon, either on an account level (and then on by default, of course) or on an instance level or both.

Oh, by the way: The ability to completely lock out entire Fediverse projects already exists in the Fediverse right now, too. It's exclusive to two other Fediverse server apps that aren't Mastodon, both of which introduced this feature in September.

¹Here's a probably incomplete list of still-active Fediverse server apps with quote-posts which, yes, can quote-post Mastodon toots right now and will be able to quote-post Mastodon toots regardless of opt-in or opt-out:

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

And both Threads and the Bridgy Fed Bluesky bridge support quote-posts, too.

(Inb4 both Oliphant and The Bad Space trying hard to catch all instances of the server apps mentioned above to blocklist them all.)

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