It's more like Usenet users complaining that NZB downloaders don't let their users read text posts. Nobody using an NZB downloader gives a fuck about text posts. They're not there to chat with their fellow humans, they're there to download files. Both the text posts and binary files are transmitted by the same substrate, NNTP, but the protocol clearly has multiple groups of people using it for very different purposes.

Comparing it to email is inappropriate, because email is addressed to you, and you get upset if email servers/clients drop emails. But newsfeeds are not addressed to you. Neither is RSS/Atom. ActivityPub, generally speaking, isn't either. How you choose to experience messages coming your way is up to you. This whole article is making the assumption that if you want something more different, e.g. Pixelfed, PeerTube, Lemmy (Fediverse Instagram/YouTube/Reddit), it basically must also be Mastodon/Pleroma (Fediverse Twitter). Why must it?

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andai 3 hours ago | parent [-]

In the article the author mentioned that it's possible to message him over several protocols, but that only one of them will actually deliver the message?

	▲	amiga386 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's on the author to advertise how they'd like communicated with. A phone number != an email address != a WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram account != a Twitter/Facebook/Mastodon/etc. handle != a specific handle on a specific Discord/Slack/IRC service != "I go to the Lamb and Flag in Punterby on Wednesdays, maybe see me there" It's irrelevant whether a low level protocol or its clients deliver everything or not. What matters is human A reaching human B. If human B wants to be reached, they will tell people in advance what their communication preferences are. And they will recognise that not all communication methods are fungible nor want to be or can be made to be. You can't expect ActivityPub to have the same behaviour as SMTP any more than you could IRC.