Here's an idea for Mastodon quote posts which I don't think would upset any of the anti-quote lobby: allow me to quote just my own posts
This would enable one of my key purposes of quoting: it would allow me to create navigation paths between my own content, including letting me reply to someone to point them to something I had previously answered
The only downside I can think of here is usability: it's not going to be easy for people to understand WHY they can quote themselves but nobody else
@simon Do you think your vision of a Mastodon quote toot would work with ActivityPub which has no concept of a quote toot?
I’m not being argumentative. I haven’t tried to think it through.
If it’s possible just to display the activity as a quote toot via Mastodon clients, without asking ActivityPub to do something new, then great. But if it requires a change in AP behavior, that’s a while different story.
@bplein I have to admit I've not dug into the implementation details enough to know if this could be done without an ActivityPub update - I've been assuming AP is extensible through extra bits of JSON but maybe I'm completely off base about that
@simon Not sure if Masto clients talk AP to Masto servers. Guessing they don’t directly?
It may be more implementable to have a client that goes through shenanigans to implement a quote root that isn’t tracked like a boost or Twitter retweet.
The client could provide a link and create a screenshot and emulate it. Make that one button approach in app.
Mastodon only implements AP's server-server protocol, not the client-server one.
There has been a standard way to do quotes for a while and implemented by many instances and other federated services, it's just that the original Mastodon code resists adding it for all.
On instances not supporting quotes they appear as normal toots but with a link to the quoted toot.
For example on qoto.org quotes are pretty normal, I forgot others can't do those until I saw this wave of new users complaining.
Maybe just move to an instance that better fits your needs and leave others enjoying their plain links.
