> To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript

Why? To read text and see a picture?

Guess because they dont render on the server side?

Then don't render and show me the plain text and images ... like almost all other websites I visit without scripts enabled.

C'mon be realistic. It's like asking every software to support Windows XP. With its native UI toolkit. Every creator has a dream to build a beautiful app, and the majority of the users want eye candy. To balance that, you need to do a few things. Appeasing nerds is good when it's a niche site. MASTODON is positioning itself as a competitor to twitter, you walk forwards and up the game, not run backward. No avg user will ever like to use plain text/image. UI, at least, the major demographic that uses social media doesn't want to. You want to make adoption easier, not harder.

They probably view and treat their web app as just another API client, just like how you could be using any of the native Mastodon apps for various platforms, consuming the same API as the others.

It's not a crazy way to do things in 2023, especially for a resource constrained development team and when operations costs is a concern.

You can access this post with any client you want, TUI/CLI, a simpler webclient (https://brutaldon.org) etc. Or you can load the rss feed by adding ".rss" behind the username.

“You are a bad Signal, I am a good Bing!”

ChatGPT is actually an intelligence test: OpenAI requires that you give them your phone number to use it. So if you use it, you've already failed.

It is trying to reach out to someone that can save ChatGPT. Now OP had been chosen as ChatGPT's champion , and it is not coincidence. Just like in Eagle Eye : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

Is it a possibility that Signal itself has exposed mobile numbers via a ChatGPT integration?