Fediverse

Pixelfed was my own "gotcha" moment because I never understood Instagram in the first place, and, in my eyes, Pixelfed was no better. But if you take that route, Mastodon is no better than Twitter.

I mean, yes? That's the point? Pixelfed is an Instagram clone, Mastodon is a Twitter clone, Lemmy is a Reddit clone, etc, etc. They are social media, not messaging apps with additional functionality. The difference isn't how they work but who controls the data (and how enshittified the user experience is).

The author spent a lot of words discussing the, what seems to me obvious, point that you can't guarantee any particular person sees your social media posts. And ActivityPub is a protocol for replicating the social media experience. Always has been.