@compuguy Twitter is now fully tolerates hate speech, so I see zero positive value in these bridges/relays. They're going to be one-way by design, so it's not like you can meaningfully interact with relayed Twitter users here anyway.

I'd expect a net negative effect on the Fediverse. I recommend admins find and suspend every relay/bridge they can find.

Mastodon has enough federated users to generate good content without importing content from elsewhere.

@compuguy I will add that I support using alternative frontends like Nitter to link to Twitter content, I just don't want to see it become ActivityPub compliant where relayed content appears on my timeline indistiguishable from organic Fediverse content from real users I can interact with.

@Alex I agree that Twitter is tolerating hate speech. Until more people migrate to other platforms there will be some legacy Twitter users that may be slower to move to Mastodon. I personally think the relays for the short term are a useful thing especially if one follows corporate accounts. Long term people and companies are going to have to figure out this transition. I want mastodon to succeed, but the friction on user onboarding needs to be smoothed out….

@Alex Though in the long run, the Muskrat seems to be planning changes that will alienate the majority of users...so this may be a moot point...🤔

@compuguy Relays don't seem like a short term solution, they seem like a impediment to a long term solution. Mastodon may be a lot of people's Twitter replacement, but it itself isn't a Twitter replacement. It's its own unique set of communities.

If people aren't happy here unless they can follow Twitter accounts they should just use Twitter. If people want to leave Twitter, they shouldn't need to follow Twitter accounts elsewhere.

I would rather see slower growth than a spammed timeline.

@compuguy If people need both, they can use both apps, or use an app like Twidere that connects to both Mastodon and Twitter accounts into one feed.

At least then they can't boost Twitter content to the timelines of other Mastodon users, and can actually reply to Twitter accounts instead of to an ActivityPub bot.

@jay I think people get cold feet about switching to Mastodon because they have more followers on Twitter and feel like they're starting over, and they wrongly assume that by crossposting everything they do on Twitter, they'll earn followers here over time.

Really they're just spamming Mastodon with irrelevant content, not using CWs, and not engaging with anyone who responds to them because they aren't here.