Journalists will never stick around this app long term sadly unless it adds quote posting. We desperately need it to communicate effectively, build on each others ideas, and add crucial context to posts. These are things replies simply do not accomplish. Also quote posting or reblogging does not = harassment! Tumblr, for instance, has had the feature since the beginning. We need it here now too 🙏🏻
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social quote posting is available with alternative server software! I wish more people knew this
@Lxtruong I’m dumb how does this work? I’m on the app and I don’t see a way to do it and everything shows as links there’s not even link previews 😰
Oops uou might not see my example bc you were tagged. It's here https://i.calckey.cloud/notes/994oo646qk
@Lxtruong @taylorlorenz are there native client apps with this functionality?
@PieterPeach@mastodon.social @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social I'm unaware of any. There are other things deliberately unavailable in Mastodon (toot level text searches) that are available in other compatible software as well.
@Lxtruong @taylorlorenz this text level search (outside of your own posts) would presumably require servers to allow scraping and indexing? My understanding this is not consensus behaviour
@Lxtruong @PieterPeach oh wow you can’t even search the text of toots posted on Mastodon? That also seems like a huge issue for journalists seeking to use this platform. I’m sure there are reasons why but dang
@taylorlorenz Remember the history of Mastodon. It was not built in the face of Musk buying twitter. It was built by people who could not be on Twitter safely even when Jack was in charge. Decisions like no text search and no reblogging were in specific responses to the abusive behavior that led Mastodon's creators to do the hard work of setting up an alternative in the first place.
These pre-April 2022 users who still own the majority of large instances and are the active developers of the software did not want a place for Journalists - many would have found the prying and data aggregation journalist do on social media exceedingly distasteful.
unless things change Mastodon will never have the broadcast vibes of Twitter which emphasized views and interactions. This social network emphasizes the building of direct relationships and to use it successfully you need to be ready to spend far more social capital developing trust and reputation then the equivalent Twitter account.
Twitter under Jack Dorsey really catered to journalists and politicians because they brought in lots of views, and it became a great place to not only put out a story, but to develop one as well. Mastodon was designed by people who didn't want their social media interactions on the front page of the New York Times. For that reason, I suspect that journalists, news makers, and politicians will remain on Twitter in spite of Elon Musk. They are to Twitter what live sports has become to cable TV - the one use that a new technology cannot easily disrupt.
@antares @taylorlorenz One could technically use a Google Search too (I think Google is indexing Mastodon servers without permission now).
@darnell 🤨 A a lot of instances you cannot even see the local timeline unless you are logged in. I would be shocked if Google was not honoring the robots.txt. If it was indexing like you claim it would be very easy to discover through server logs and there were be a lot of instance admins shitting bricks and looking for the fastest technical solutions to block such indexing.
@marty_crabneck @antares Well, test this out. Type in a random word (like carrots 🥕) & the domain of an instance. See what posts come up.
@antares Yeah, but it’s Google. I would not be surprised if others like Facebook were crawling Mastodon links as well (I assume they do but I could be wrong).