@changeable@social.linux.pizza
If you backfilled all posts from a prolific long-running account (potentially thousands of posts), that could use a lot of pointless resources.
But backfilling for example the last five posts wouldn't use much resources at all.
For me, the main aim of backfilling is not to leave any profile blank after people have followed it, especially new profiles that may have posted their best stuff as first posts.
@feditips @changeable pinned posts especially should be backfilled, especially considering Mastodon already puts a hard limit on those and that they often contain important information.