It's obviously an outrage that #ResPublicae is still on Mastodon v3.5.
Mastodon v4 was released in 2022 but we still don't know how to satisfy some needs of ours:
1) Disable the "explore" page which pushes potentially harmful trending posts.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/20848
2) Avoid promoting federated accounts and posts from the front page, especially in the profile directory and explore page.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/22620#issuecomment-1363670888
3) A local profile directory.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18078#issuecomment-2566237045
Is #glitchsoc the way to go? Some instances seem to have solved some of those issues, but not all of them.
Another advantage of Mastodon v3.5 is digital preservation. Server-side rendering allows the #InternetArchive to successfully archive our pages with minimal effort, as seen in:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250106121820/https://respublicae.eu/public
https://web.archive.org/web/20250106122009/https://respublicae.eu/@EU_Commission/113771861420849085
Mastodon v4 timelines are difficult to archive (while presenting no difficulties for abusive scrapers) so the wayback machine snapshots are hit and miss:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250106123628/https://mastodon.online/public/local
https://web.archive.org/web/20250106123841/https://mastodon.online/@jackmjenkins/113781434445879579
However things seem to have considerably improved in the past two years on this front as well, so that's not a reason to delay the upgrade further.