If you’ve spent any time recently on Mastodon, you have probably encountered the raging debate over the “quote/toot” (QT), mostly fueled by Twitter refugees who loved or hated the Twitter “quote/tweet”. As of now, Mastodon does not support a QT mechanism. The founding developer of Mastodon (Eugen Rochco) doesn’t believe in it, so he didn’t code it into the current reference version of the server.
Mostly, the arguments can be paraphrased as emotional takes and experiences like the following:
- ”I’m in a vulnerable minority and people on Twitter often use QT to hound and persecute me. They take my words out of context and hurl them back in my face to humiliate me”
- “I love QT on Twitter because I can give more life to great ideas that I have just read”.
- … plus a myriad of arguments in between.
I’ve been trying to break the problem down to make sense of it in my own weird way and I think I am finally getting the puzzle pieces to fall into place.
Currently, the closest feature in Mastodon is the “boost”. It’s identical to the plain Twitter “retweet”. A boost or retweet says one thing: the booster approves of the post strongly enough to share it with followers. It’s approval … without nuance.
The quote/tweet is only a bit more complex, but it seems to have surprisingly subtle behaviors. IMO, it has two main components:
- The QT comments on a prior post. Accordingly, it inherits the gravitas and interest potential of the post it is responding to. The person making the QT doesn’t have to write a magnificent post because they can co-opt any post on the system as their platform.
- Unlike a simple boost, the QT allows the person making the QT to piggyback any message they want onto the chosen platform post. They can express outrage or admiration. Happiness or sadness. Delight or disgust. Dismissal or curiosity. They can misconstrue it or refine it. In other words, they can reuse the original post however they want, for any purpose.
In the hands of a benign and sincere Twitter user, this is a wonderful tool. The problem comes if we game out its usage in the hands of bad actors. Consider the following scenario:
A well organized bad actor decides to use Twitter (or Mastodon) to create chaos in a target society. The bad actor might be a state actor (e.g., an office full of Russian intelligence workers) or a nihilistic fringe group (e.g., Nazi devotees of the Turner Diaries). It might be a sadistic or bigoted troll with anger issues.
The plan of attack could go like this:
- Search Twitter using hashtags that are social lightning rods. #BLM #trans #ukraine #trump etc.
- Look for a juicy post that everyone is responding to and liking. The juicy post might even be a great pootie pic. Ideally, the author will have a ton of followers. The new “views” feature on Twitter may be helpful.
- Whatever the base message, craft a quick QT that argues in some contrarian way using the most triggering language possible. The key is that you don’t need to be a credible commentator or a regular contributor. Just QT some triggering shit and fire it off.
- The QT will go to your own followers, but the real goal is to get the original author to respond. They will probably just block you, but every now and then they will react and that, along with your QT, will go out to all of their followers. Generate a legitimate tweet storm and you’ve hit a grand slam.
- Bonus points if your office mates sureptitiously follow you and (sort of) argue with you. Your vile post may be blocked, but their (almost but not quite sane) response might get a like or a retweet or, luck of luck, earn a follow.
- Rinse and repeat 30 or 40 times per hour.
Imagine a team of 20 operative seats working 24 hrs in shifts @30 posts per hour, they would spew out 14,400 of these emotional grenades each day. That’s 5.2 million per year! Each QT holds the potential to trigger a ripple effect as normal users react (and over-react) in shock. Set teams to work against the US, Britain, India, Germany … etc. etc. Keep that up for months or years. The effect can be, and has been, devastating to civil discourse in every society that is targeted.
Remove the QT mechanism and this attack plan is less practical. To mimic it, you could reply to juicy posts, but those responses will likely be hidden from most readers among a long comment thread. Alternatively, you could try to generate an original post that merits strong attention and interest. First, that will take a lot more time and effort per tweet. Instead of 30 per hour, you might get 1 per hour if you’re lucky. Second, you probably don’t have enough of the right followers to make the desired impact.
In summary, I now view the QT as being a bit like fentanyl. If you have ever woken up from abdominal surgery, fentanyl is a miracle drug. If you have watched a friend disintegrate and die from its misuse, it is a hell spawn. Same exact chemical.
The QT is the most powerful of the engagement tools in social media and it has a commensurate range of benefits and risks. On balance, I would prefer to test whether social media can be conducted effectively on Mastodon without it … it can always be added later.