we really need to do a better job educating folks about how the map is not the protocol
mentions being in the body of the status is convention and abstraction, activitypub has address fields just like email but they simply aren't displayed
seeing a lot of people blaming pleroma for the spam today and hey, maybe they did have a plugin that automates the @\everyone process, and they definitely have a more-asshole-on-average culture
but out-of-body mentions are just an activitypub feature that software can do. i think friendica does it, and monsterpit put hashtags elsewhere
