December 27, 2025
From DMs to memes
We Lost Communication to Entertainment
From talking to scrolling — Fediverse feuds over Pixelfed, ads, and missing messages
TLDR: A blogger claims social apps like Pixelfed treat our networks as content feeds, not reliable messaging. Comments split: some call it pretentious, others blame advertising, and a few say communication still thrives in chat while feeds are just media — a fight over what the internet is for.
The Fediverse — a web of apps like Mastodon and Pixelfed — just hit a raw nerve. A blogger on ploum.net accused Pixelfed of ‘hurting’ the network by dropping messages, arguing ActivityPub should be a communication protocol, not a content firehose. Cue instant drama and receipts, with defenders saying the spec literally calls it a platform to deliver content. Older internet diehards rallied behind email-like reliability; creators and scrollers shrugged: it’s entertainment, not mission-critical chat.
The comments are the show. One confused reader flagged the timeline inconsistency (“controversial post… but written a year ago?”), another dunked on the ‘not profitable’ claim with a spicy “Ma Bell” throwback to the phone era. A snappy take declared, “We lost communication to advertising,” while a harsher voice called the essay “pretentious,” ironically accusing it of entertaining itself. Pragmatists chimed in: text and chat are fine for talking; broadcast feeds get hijacked by ads — that’s media, not conversation. Meanwhile, multi-account culture (one Mastodon, one Pixelfed) got roasted as platform brainwashing, but fans see it as normal. The fediverse isn’t one world — it’s two incompatible universes: people who want messages never to vanish, and people who just want the fun to keep flowing.
Key Points
- •The author contends Pixelfed deliberately drops messages, which he argues undermines trust in a federated network.
- •Reactions to the post revealed two perspectives: ActivityPub as a communication protocol vs. a content consumption protocol.
- •The article highlights widespread multi-account usage across platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed, seen as aligned with content delivery.
- •The W3C definition describes ActivityPub as a decentralized social networking protocol focused on delivering notifications and content via APIs.
- •The author concludes the Fediverse functions as a content distribution system rather than a reliable communication network.