@technomancy vetting elisp! hah!
but yes, i totally take the point and that's what i was thinking also.
but the prob with optionals is in this case no one will bother to do it, while it turns out it's actually an annoying but important way that fedi works, and mastodon.el doesn't do enough to help it work properly, which i always felt bad about. masto devs (that hellscape) seemingly refuse to do better server-side...
i'll think on it.