> As a result, Mastodon users basically never boost toots to say how wrong they are, and there isn't an issue with armies of followers descending on the original author.

Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd strongly disagree with aren't joining.

This isn't a bad thing (it's the "local" point this post makes), but it's important to emphasize this as the primary factor responsible for people being nicer, above any design decisions the author is complimenting. Keeping people civil is easy when there are ten thousand times fewer and they all voted socialist.

I checked the mastodon.social local timeline and fewer than 1% of posts were tagged, so I don't see how that's going to make a big difference to my experience.

> Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can.

False. This isn't a legal obligation, it's what the investors want because they're toxic scum.