Can Mastodon actually subscribe to a static ActivityPub feed?
A lot of blogs are statically generated (it’s cheaper, faster and safer). Ideally, static websites could just generate JSON-LD for ActivityPub in a similar way as how they generate XML for RSS, which would make the transition easier… but last time I checked Mastodon didn’t support that very well, so RSS was still a better fit in many situations since it does not require an active server component. I’d love to be shown otherwise.
I’d argue it’s search engines and social networks the ones that grant any level of "virality and discoverability ", not the internet itself. In the internet you need “third party” solutions for indexing or searching.
I mean, Mastodon probably intentionally lacks tools that enhance “virality and discoverability”, but that’s not the same thing as saying that it actively prevents information spread. You could in theory build a search engine for toots, or an alternate fork that does have those features. It’s even free and open source software, so it’s open to whatever.