That's the fundamental Mastodon problem: the software is bad and only getting worse, breaking the rest of the Fediverse in new and interesting ways.  I use the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" thing Microsoft uses because while I feel it may not have been Mastodon's original purpose it's certainly what their actions communicate now: their response to pretty much any external software having problems with them is that you should clearly join the Mastodon mothership.

(Pleroma isn't much better with that behaviour, but they aren't in as strong a position to be pushy with it, and I think everyone except That One Dev understand that.  They're a minority even compared to GNU social right now, though the community is growing.)