(cringe) This is what I'd call technologically illiterate journalism. It's not quite as bad as complaining about the name of the project (insert crying baby gif), but it's not far elevated above that level.

https://medium.com/dark-mountain/fatal-flaw-with-mastodon-1ef0cb1965ed

He mentions that the system is distributed, but obviously hasn't grokked what that actually means.

Servers have user accounts. I know, shocking, isn't it? Same applies for email, xmpp, forums and just about any other service located on a server. They're not all magically synchronized by some universally agreed protocol. Nor would it be reasonable for them to be.

If you want a pre-internet analogy, there could be Bob living in Manchester and Bob living in Glasgow, and they might be different Bobs!

Scandalized? I thought you would be.
.@bob So one of the things that I do genuinely think differentiates Mastodon and Email is that if you control the domain for email you can change servers very easily. You leave old data behind but changing MX records means you fully control where new mail and messages get routed.

.@bob the "you have an email account on a server" is true inasmuch as you use a given server to host email while you point your domain at it. I can stay [email protected] and also leave an email server I don't like anymore.

I did this exact thing, in fact, when I switched from google apps to fastmail. Control over domains means more options and control for users. Forums and mastodon don't have this.