so... what's the point of Masto accounts that are a bot just mirroring content from someone else (usually wit some sort of celebrity status) on twitter?
BITD the bots were one of the worst things of identi.ca.
@algernon I don't get it. For me is always the possibility of interacting. You can't interact with the mirror.
@reidrac Indeed. But I weren't interacting them on twitter while I was there, either. I read, and for me, that's enough. I'm curious about their output, and the bots let me consume that in a comfortable fashion.
@ultramagnus_tcv @reidrac I tried the RSS via Nitter way first. It was okay, but it was very annoying, because tweets didn't really fit in with the rest of my subscriptions. My feed reader is also something I check once or twice a day, while my timeline here just scrolls.
Different consume patterns.
And since I wasn't interacting with the people I follow via bots, not being able to doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. If one wants to interact, the bots are annoying indeed. I don't.
@reidrac I think they're a plus for people who would otherwise have a Twitter tab open in order to follow people they consider newsworthy. So having their posts mirrored on Mastodon is useful and lets you reply/boost through the normal mechanisms, rather than by copying in a screenshot from Twitter.
I can see how they're not everyone's cup of tea, though. Maybe some Masto clients will implement a "no bots" preference to hide them globally?
@kadin Not sure a tech solution is needed, you need to actively follow them.
@reidrac Theres a few bot focused mastodon servers. I tend to block the entire instances to stop them showing up in hashtag searches.
@reidrac I follow a couple of those, because I find it more convenient to read their tweets among the toots on my timeline, than to read it in my feed reader.
I don't have a twitter account, so can't follow people over there. But there are a few whom I'd wish to read, but aren't here. Having one timeline of statuses is convenient, and these bots let me have that.