Mastodon, an open source decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out a somewhat controversial new feature by adding quote posts, which will launch next week. The feature allows a user to quote someone else’s post and reshare it with their own response or commentary. On other platforms, similar functionality has contributed to a culture of dunking, where users often deride others with snark or insulting humor.
To address this concern, Mastodon is implementing quote posts with built-in safety controls. These protections are designed to allow quote posts to be used responsibly to expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices.
Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts can be quoted. Users can decide who can quote them through a setting where they can change their defaults. They can set permissions by choosing between Anyone, Followers only, or Just me. Additionally, users can control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be public, for followers only, or to a quiet public setting which makes quotes public but removes them from Mastodon’s search, trends, and public timeline.
Users can also override their default settings on a post-by-post basis by navigating to the Visibility and interaction settings within the composer screen. This is useful if you are about to say something controversial or anything that could attract unwanted attention from those with opposing views.
Users will have control of their posts even after they are quoted. When someone quotes a post, the user being quoted is notified in the app and can choose to remove their original post from the other person’s quote post. This is accessible through the Options menu. From there, users can change the quote settings to address any future quoting of their post. They can also block users to prevent them from seeing and quoting their posts in the future.
Support for quote posts will first arrive over the week ahead to the larger Mastodon servers at mastodon.online and mastodon.social. It will then become available in Mastodon’s 4.5 software update.
To quote a post, you will find the new option under Mastodon’s Boost feature, which is similar to X’s repost or retweet. Because the fediverse is a network of servers running different software, quote posts may not immediately appear everywhere. Some platforms may not update to use the technical specification enabling quote post support right away.