Mastodon, an open supply, decentralized various to X, is rolling out a considerably controversial characteristic by including quote posts, which is able to launch subsequent week. The characteristic, which permits a person to cite another person’s publish and reshare it with their very own response or commentary, has contributed to a tradition of “dunking” on X, the place customers typically deride different individuals by responding with snark or insulting humor.

To handle this concern, Mastodon says it’s implementing quote posts with security controls.

These protections are designed to permit quote posts for use responsibly, to “develop discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices,” the platform states.

Mastodon provides customers a number of methods to regulate how their posts could be quoted. For starters, the platform lets customers determine who can quote them by way of a setting the place you may change your defaults. Right here, you may set the permissions for who can quote you by selecting between “Anybody,” “Followers solely,” or “Simply me.” Moreover, you may management the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be seen to the general public, to followers solely, or a setting referred to as “quiet public,” which makes the quotes public however removes them from Mastodon’s search, developments, and public timeline.

Customers may even have the ability to override their default settings on a post-by-post foundation, if want be, by navigating to the “Visibility and interplay settings” throughout the composer display. This could be helpful if you’re about to say one thing controversial or something that would appeal to undesirable consideration from these with opposing views, as an example.

Plus, customers may have management of their posts even after they’re quoted, the Mastodon weblog publish concerning the new characteristic explains.

When somebody quotes a publish, the person being quoted is notified within the app, and so they can select to take away their unique publish from the opposite individual’s quote publish. That is accessible by way of the Choices menu (the three dots icon). From this location, customers can change the quote settings to deal with any future quoting of their publish going ahead. They’ll additionally block customers to forestall them from seeing and quoting their posts sooner or later.

Assist for quote posts will first arrive over the week forward to the bigger Mastodon servers at mastodon.on-line and mastodon.social. It can then develop into out there in Mastodon’s 4.5 software program replace.

To cite a publish, you’ll discover the brand new choice underneath Mastodon’s Enhance (just like X’s repost/retweet characteristic). As a result of the fediverse, or open social net, is a community of servers working completely different software program, quote posts could not instantly seem in all places, and a few platforms could not replace to make use of the technical specification enabling quote publish help straight away.