@ERDonnachie What @atomicpoet is struggling not to say is that there are other platforms, like Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey and many more, that have quote-posts and plenty of other features different from Mastodon (bigger character limit, use of Markdown, emoji reactions...) and still interact perfectly fine with each other. That's why it is called the Fediverse.

My point is, you don't need to waste time complaining about Mastodon's shortcomings if that feels unproductive and frustrating to you. You can migrate to other platforms that use the same protocol but have the features you actually want. You're not the first one complaining about quote-posts. That discussion has been going on for years now.