Mastodon, the decentralized open source social network, is releasing its newest version, 4.5. This update introduces support for Quote Posts to all server operators, along with other administrative features, conversation improvements, and more.
The addition of quote posts is a significant change to how the Mastodon network operates as it attempts to compete with larger rivals like X and Threads. Quoting is considered a baseline feature for text-first social networks and can be a major driver of conversation. However, Mastodon wanted to launch the feature with more user protections to prevent changing the culture of its network.
On platforms like X, quote posts have historically contributed to a culture of dunking, where users deride others with cruel jokes or insults. To address this concern, Mastodon’s version of quote posts includes added safety controls. The feature was initially rolled out to larger Mastodon servers in September ahead of the full software update.
Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts are quoted. Users can decide who can quote them by choosing between options like anyone, followers only, or just me. They can also control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to public, followers only, or a quiet public setting which removes them from search, trends, and the public timeline. Users can override these default settings on a per-post basis.
The app will alert a user when they are quoted, allowing them to remove their original post from the quote if they wish. Users can also block others to prevent them from seeing and quoting posts in the future.
While the rollout of quote posts is the major addition, the 4.5 release also fixes an issue where users on older servers would sometimes miss seeing replies. Server operators gain new tools to optionally disable content feeds, set a local feed as their homepage, and block specific users. The moderation interface has been updated to display needed context like link previews and quote posts to aid in decision-making. The release also brings native emoji support to Mastodon’s web interface.
Mastodon remains one of the larger networks on the fediverse, the open social web powered by the ActivityPub protocol. The overall fediverse has nearly 12 million users, with Mastodon accounting for over 8 million of that figure. Its monthly active user number is approximately 670,000. Threads, which integrates with ActivityPub, is not fully counted in these figures. Threads has over 400 million monthly active users and 150 million daily active users.