[aceazzameen]

I don't understand why quote-boosting can't be a user-selected option.

  • Allow users to opt-in/out the ability to perform a quote-boost.
  • Allow users to opt-in/out the ability to see others' quote-boosts.
  • Allow server admins to opt-in/out the quote-boost feature.

Wouldn't this solve everyone's issue with quote-resharing?

[ocdtrekkie]

The main issue is not covered by any of those cases, it'd need to be:

* Allow users to opt-in/out of their posts being quote-boosted by others.

[Zak]

Neither Mastodon nor Activitypub has a permissions system that supports that sort of thing. Perhaps it needs one.

[noirscape]

It effectively can't have that. Quote statuses are practically just a special way of formatting a link to another status in the message text at the moment. There's a proposal iirc to try and create a more genericized version by extending AP, but it's stalled if memory serves me right.

Even so, you're going to have implementations that will happily ignore those choices; as long as the body of an external post is obtainable in some way (right now most info is just in the embed meta tags), someone can make a version of it that ignores permissions.

[Zak]

Any permissions system is, of course a polite suggestion since ActivityPub pushes content to a large number of other peoples' computers in the typical case. The whole network depends on most servers being relatively well-behaved so I don't think that's a barrier.

[ocdtrekkie]

Perhaps. My comment wasn't based on technical feasibility, but specifying the particular concern which is why Mastodon and several other ActivityPub projects do not support quote-boosts.

[aceazzameen]

Ah yes, especially that.