Mastodon 4.4 is out now, and it brings a bunch of changes for things like profiles and lists and also lays the groundwork for quote posts.

With profiles, you can now feature specific hashtags so that people can see all the posts you’ve tagged with those hashtags, the Mastodon says. Mastodon is also making a change to how pinned posts work: you can still pin up to five posts onto your profile, but they’ll now show up as a single carousel so you don’t have to scroll down as far to see new posts. When you’re looking at a profile, Mastodon can now tell you how many people you follow also follow that person.

For lists, Mastodon says that creating and managing them has been “significantly streamlined” and that “it’s easier than ever to add and remove accounts from your lists both directly from profiles and from your own follows and followers listings.”

And with quote posts, which Mastodon already said were in the works, the platform is doing what it calls “part one” of implementation. “Since Mastodon runs on over 8,000 independent servers that together form the platform you know, releasing features like this requires a two-pronged approach: first we release code that supports processing and displaying this new format, and then release code that allows our users to actively use the feature,” Mastodon says.

With 4.4, “you will be able to see quotes from compatible Fediverse platforms (including future Mastodon releases),” but you won’t actually be able to quote posts until Mastodon’s 4.5 release.

Other new features include a reminder to add alt text to images and video that you post, updating Mastodon’s mobile web UI to make it “mimic native apps,” and streamlining onboarding.


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[–] 1 point 1 year ago

The technology is fine, it's the userbase that keeps me away from mastodon. Anything that has 90% diaper furs should be burned to the ground.

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  • 25 comments in c/fediverse@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 20 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Wow, took them so long to get quote posts. A welcome addition imo (I know there's a lot of controversy around implementing it, but for me, I think I prefer it).

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    @mintiefresh @Alphane_Moon whats the controversy surround it? im not aware of any

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    To my understanding (please take with several grains of salt), some folks felt like it would encourage toxicity since you can essentially mock something someone said without saying it to them directly, while sending your audience to the original post, and I believe for quite some time the plan was intentionally not to add it

    On the other hand, I've heard folks suggest that by allowing people to have their own isolated conversation about an idea you can potentially limit some of the harmful consequences of people with large audiences or something, but I don't remember the exact explanation

    Personally I'm happy to get quote posts and I'm happy that mastodon is cautious about implementing features that facilitate hostile interactions in the way that major platforms do for engagement

    Hopefully someone can chime in with a more informed/detailed explanation, but I thought I'd share what I know in case I'm the only one to reply :)

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @Cris_Color thanks. Friendica has it and i dont see people talking down about it though. I also already seen people being that way (it was a conservative using #justsayin afterward, coming from another instance) on a reply, maybe just notify people of quote posts so its not something equivalent to be talking at their backs without them being aware of it, notification could help

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Note that for now, quote posts from other platforms will be displayed correctly in Mastodon 4.4. You can't quote posts yet. That will come in 4.5

    (I will update mastodon.world tomorrow)

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It encourages dog-piling essentially

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Oh, my understanding is that originally they didn't want quote posts because it could lead to a culture of people dunking on each other and a lot of negativity.

    So I believe there was a lot of resistance early on against that feature. That's just what I've seen people saying whenever this feature was requested over the past few years. I could be wrong though.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    No idea, I do use Mastodon relatively regularly, but I am not on top of development discussions.

    This was news for me so I decided to share. :)

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    For my understanding, what is the difference between a quote post and a post that contains a link to another post?

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    This is fantastic. I REALLY hope you can set a control on a post that allows quoting to be disabled or only allowed by people you follow. A great step in the right direction.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Whatever keeps us all tooting is good in my book. Enjoying the services and keep up the great work.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    For a second there I thought you meant mastodon the band. Interesting new direction for the lads I thoughts to myself

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    They did recently kick Brent out of the band, speaking of new directions

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh, shit! He was always a bit vitriolic.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, I saw them in Philly like 5-6 years ago. Brent was getting increasingly agitated with the roadies in between songs. It got to the point where he smashed his monitor to pieces right on the stage. Guy clearly has some issues.

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