https://ploum.net/2025-12-04-pixelfed-against-fediverse.html
I don't think it's important at all because nobody really uses Mastodon anyway; but it shows that doing decentralised software is hard, because each actor can just do whatever they want.
The "account" then is just the data on your PDS with as many views into it as someone wants to develop. If I'm browsing (viewing) an account (subset of data) through a platform or app devoted to one type of content (data), I only want to see that kind of content in the main timeline. I can always pull out something like ATExplore or PDSls if I want to see everything.
The complaint only makes sense for a protocol that expects you to make a new account for a new platform and has limited portability. It doesn't make sense when an "account" is just a view into data, no more morally compromised than an SQL query. I'm skeptical the movement to revive the dead half of ActivityPub that could enable similar functionality will go anywhere, but I am rooting for the folks behind it.
760 000 active users [1] beg to differ
edit: the graph is not great, it seems to have plateaued, but also not decreasing. Good for a decentralized protocol.
Me and all the (real human) people I follow on Mastodon disagree. Many well known people are on Mastodon. A lot of folks I used to follow on RSS are on Mastodon. For me, Mastodon is what killed RSS.[1]
[1] RSS was well and alive long after Google Reader shut down.