His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines.
I don’t use Mastadon cause I don’t care for micro-blogging, but nevertheless, I like this.
Feeds offer algorithm transparency and you can use alternative frontends. ATProto can’t suddenly be turned to private and disable third party access, it is intrinsically public.
It doesn’t have to be app-based, simply account based. Then the third party app doesn’t mean anything.