With Mastodon now rolling out phase one of their quote posts plan, I’ve reviewed my own blog post from February on this. My opinion hasn’t changed. I’ll make sure Micro.blog displays quote posts nicely when Mastodon finishes phase two, in the upcoming Mastodon 4.5 release.
I’ll also be watching what the real-word consequence will be for letting Mastodon users “withdraw” consent for a quoted post. It will probably be fine, but if it becomes commonplace, there’s a chance that more people will resort to using screenshots of quotes, because those can’t be withdrawn. If that happens, maybe the good intentions for this feature will have backfired.
That risk is small, though. There’s just much less friction in clicking a repost button. Most people will do what’s easiest.
While I don’t currently have plans for a repost button in Micro.blog, it’s worth noting that third-party clients are free to build their own interface for this. That’s exactly what developer Greg Morris did with Micro Social. It has a reblog menu option that creates an editable <blockquote> for you.
