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> This is by design so that a person’s Toot is only Boosted in a way that gets the message they intended across.

Seems like a bad design decision trying to force people to use the platform in an unnatural way. They will just take screenshots and add their own comments instead, making the "retoots with comments" inferior to what it could be with native comments.

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Whether it's bad design or not this is one of the aspects of Mastodon that appeals to me the most. The friction is just enough to stop the context collapse that plagues Twitter

Right. I'm also a fan of friction any time I hear an argument that "well, [bad behavior] is inevitable, so you may as well purposely include it and design it to be easy to do!"

We've seen that design can shape behavior in profound ways, and we have no obligation whatsoever to follow pressure toward a lowest common denominator if we think there are better designs that consciously resist that pressure.

Yep. I don't think it's coincidence that Twitter's slide started right around when they started giving you notifications for likes/retweets of retweets and replies when before it was only for your own posts. Then it got worse with quote tweeting.

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