@udon @TerminalAutism @shebang @xianc78 Last time I checked a Mastodon instance, JS was required in order to just browse.
It's ultimately not much about the backend, but rather the frontend.
The reason why Pleroma is superior over Mastodon is simply because of its features and it being easier to install without having to resort to Docker containers because your distro isn't shipping all the dependencies needed for the backend to even work.

I used to believe that whichever is being used by which group of people was a factor as to which side of the argument will be more welcoming towards you, but then again you have left-leaning Pleroma instances, and you have right-leaning Mastodon instances too.
You have woke Pleroma instances and you have Mastodon instances that value "free speech" (because it really depends on how you define it).

Pleroma has emoji-based reactions, Mastodon doesn't.
And lots of features that are hard-coded in Mastodon can be flexibly defined in the admin panel in Pleroma, which was the main reason why the original Pleroma devs even made this thing in the first place.

The only plus side Mastodon has is that it doesn't straight up give you a white screen of death if you disable JS, and maybe a bigger dev community (so it's not dependent on 1 guy that got kicked out over feelings) and the fact it's funded by a tyrannical regime (the Eww), so it won't actually fall apart due to cancer culture.

But perhaps if we can build out GNU Social to have the goodies of Pleroma without the JS dependency, that would perhaps be the superior backend, especially since now that Alex has been kicked out of the Pleroma dev team, it's to be expected that development will come to a screeching halt if not already, considering him being the only one actually doing stuff development-wise.