Update for Mastodon: The “Quote Posts” come and more information on profile pages

With an update, the development team of the short message ending mastodon has noticeably revised the profile pages there, facilitated the handling of lists and prepared the basis for the long -awaited introduction of articles cited (“quote posts”). That goes out a detailed blog entry of the team – the changes can already be examined on the first instances. The changes should help users present themselves to the social network and to increase their network. Admins should also be helped to ensure security.

Small and big changes

After the update, it is shown on the profile pages how many accounts that you follow follow the account – this is already known from bluesky. In addition, pinned contributions are now displayed side by side so that they take less space overall. In addition, you can display the most used hashtags of an account and view the posts published directly by clicking. At Heise Online’s account For example, you can have all the contributions on the topic of “astronomy” list. The team has also revised the establishment and administration of lists. The audio player has also been improved and the app was adjusted to the functioning of the website.

With the update to version 4.4, Mastodon also prepares the introduction of the quota posts that have been challenged for a long time. Because the software runs on several thousand independent servers, this has to be done in two steps, the team writes. First, the technical foundations would now be laid, ensuring that cited contributions from platforms that support this are already displayed as such. In a second step, users should then be given the opportunity to quote other contributions themselves with version 4.5. So it still takes a while to really cite.

Just one day after an update from Bluesky, with which Mastodon functions were taken over, the update now shows once again how the short message services influence each other. Quote posts were a central function on Twitter and also play an important role on bluesky. Chief developer Eugen Rochko has long refused to introduce the function on Mastodon and described it as a technical basis for hate campaigns. He announced his change of course two years ago, now the implementation begins. Which version runs on a mastodon instance and whether the changes are already available can be viewed on their ABOUT page.