* There is intentionally no global search. Mastodon is about conversation among people, not about searching out every single person in the entire fediverse who mentions your name or a topic you want to argue about so you can argue with them.
* Mastodon instances can intentionally choose to not federate with other instances. This is why, even though people regularly bring up that there are servers full of Nazis on Mastodon, you never see them. Because everyone blocked their instances. Everyone blocks The Gab immediately for example. If someone on an instance is harassing people, the first step is to report them to their instance admin. If they don't take any action, the next step is to defederate from that instance because they don't have the level of moderation safety your instance expects. Defederating is what keeps out harassment and trolls, because the instances that don't moderate them get iced out of the Fediverse. But it is not, as described, a situation where one instance "Doesn't Like" another. Harassment ~= "Doesn't Like." There might be a few who defederate with that little reason, but not the vast majority.
* Sure, the small instances are an old server in someone's basement. There are also massive instances with many servers and redundancies. You can also get a managed Mastodon instance. You could also run an instance for just you on a Raspberry Pi. Your choice whether you put it in the basement or your living room.
* I'm surprised he didn't also mention a lack of quote tweets, but that's also intentional.[1]
All these complaints come down to: join an instance that runs how you want it. Join one with text search or not. Join one with strong or no moderation (but with no moderation, expect it is isolated from many other instances). Join a small instance in someone's basement or a big one with a huge patreon. Or just put up your own, in your own basement, at a host, or managed.
Or just don't join mastodon. Don't tell people to quit having fun because you choose not to understand it.
1. https://scott.mn/2022/10/29/twitter_features_mastodon_is_bet...