[danabramov]

Note a relay is a perf optimization and doesn’t have to be a single shared chokepoint.

These days running a relay is fairly cheap (~$30/mo?), there’s maybe a dozen of them, and some apps don’t use one at all (instead relying on services like https://constellation.microcosm.blue/ for querying backlinks).

[account42]

Then Twitter is also just a perf optimization for talking to the users directly.