Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps you have misunderstood the purpose and implementation of federating sites like these? No, I absolutely understand how federating sites work, and don't need the condescension. It's common, in many types of federated reimplementations of non-federated sites, to create special-case bridges that allow treating a large non-federated site as if it were following the federation protocol, precisely to help people m…
Apologies. I didn't mean to sound condescending. It just seemed like a desire to do something so entirely at odds with the two approaches to online interaction (open, user controlled, non-hierarchical vs closed, corporate controlled and top down implementations) that it confused me.
That sounds a bit like "why would you even want to run Photoshop on Unix? It's not open source! It's an entirely different philosophy!"
Many people balance different needs and values. Someone might like the idea of open federation but still need to follow people on Twitter for their day job, or simply follow a thousand interesting people that they don't want to simply drop just like that, to enter into a comparative wasteland.
Providing people with half-way solutions actually encourages more people to come and transition smoothly.