Rey (vulpish aspect) is a user on vulpine.club. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

why can't i follow Twitter friends from Mastodon?

This is a legit question.

If a major stumbling block for people joining Mastodon-based instances is that their friends aren't here, then why do we not yet have a way for folks to connect their Twitter accounts to fetch statuses from the folks they're following?

There's a lot of API hell, yes. But, we're halfway there with the crossposters (which provide a valuable service), so why not go further?

(Also this is not necessarily a GOOD idea, and the answer may very well be "because Twitter forbids it and it'll be API whack-a-mole once they figure out what's happening", but it's a question I've been wondering for over a year now.)

@rey i made a proof of concept last year (that doesn't even require the api) it's just no one (well not me) wants to actually deploy such thing because it could be pretty awful for the fediverse

Rey (vulpish aspect) @rey

@CobaltVelvet this i don't disagree with one bit.

the "how to make it not terrible and awful and destructive" part is... something requiring a lot of attention and discussion

@rey yeah i mean my conclusion was basically "let's just not"