Mastodon is finally working on adding a feature that X has had for more than a decade

In a new blog post, Mastodon confirmed that Quotes are making their way onto the platform. Those who use X will be familiar with the Quotes feature that allows users to embed another post within their own and add commentary.

Several Mastodon clients already provide a workaround that simulates quote functionality. For example, Tapbot's Ivory introduced a quote posts feature last March. When a post contains a link to another Mastodon post, Ivory displays a visual preview of the linked content, making it appear as a quoted post.

Mastodon wants to eliminate the need for such workarounds by making quotes a standard part of the ActivityPub specification so that third-party clients can have an official way to implement the functionality. The Mastodon blog says:

We’ve spent time talking with users, with other Fediverse software developers (which include user-facing applications), and with the developers of our own client apps about how they might expect to see or implement Quote Posts. The output from this will be concrete proposals to help everyone building on the Fediverse.

Aside from technical challenges, there is also the user-centric challenge of malicious usage. Mastodon acknowledged that quotes can be abused to "intentionally quote someone out of context, to direct hate speech and harass people."

It also noted that some users might not want their content to be quoted because it attracts "unwanted attention." To address this, users will be able to choose if their posts can be quoted, get notified if someone quotes their post, and withdraw their post from the quoted context whenever they want.

If you're an ActivityPub developer interested in this feature, you can find the Pre-Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (Pre-FEP) here, containing code samples as well as related discussions.

Mastodon was one of the safe havens for Twitter refugees fleeing the Musk-apocalypse after he bought the app for $44 billion in 2022. The platform recently shifted control to a new non-profit organization, "affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual."