> There is a benefit to storing entire JSON in the databases is that it allows you to receive messages you don't fully support yet
This was the rationale with Pleroma, yeah. A lot of the stuff that Pleroma "supports" it only has to support in the frontend, because the backend is a generic AP server and the frontend is where the concepts from "microblogging" live. If you wanted to do a longer-form blog or a chat server or whatever, PleromaBE could accommodate that fine, lain always refers to it as a "generic AP server", that's the idea. There was a 4chan-like UI and a Tumblr-like UI, this type of thing works fine. Conceivably, you could write a game UI.