(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 true! These negative articles seem lazy. The one on Mashable is the same. Talks about instances, but author doesn't even bother to dive into why it is that way.