I think the issue really was that pleroma is controlled by the council of fags and trannies and they are very resistant to everything Alex does for political reasons. Trannies literally fediblock instances just for using soapbox, I just saw one yesterday.

The reason it “broke fedi” was that the largest instance uses soapbox, and the people that make clients and stuff were relying on conventions rather than the standard. Alex can’t force everyone to fix those conventions but he made a good faith effort to make things work in pleroma.