How is that different from email, IRC, instant messaging, or anything else nerds use?

Webmail is perfectly possible, if clunky,without JS. That's how they used to work. IRC and IM require real-time updates of some sort, which is a reasonable use for JS. A Twitter clone shouldn't require JS just to render a page.

	▲	mr_mitm 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You also can run a Mastodon application server side and serve server-rendered pages. I'm not aware of anyone having done that yet, but, you know, be the change you want to see. It's probably got privacy implications.