On the other hand, Mastodon doesn't have this drive. Facebook, Twitter et al are designed to be addictive because higher engagement translates to higher ad revenue. But Mastodon is ad free and the cost of operating the service is defrayed over thousands of inexpensive, federated instances, so there's less pressure to generate revenue of any kind.
Unfortunately Mastodon chose to clone Twitter's design and the Tweetdeck UI, so the tendency toward short-form, low information comments is carried over from Twitter. I too believe that these design patterns encourage toxic behavior. A simple experiment for any short-form social platform would be to lift any post character limit, make longer posts more readable, and prioritize longer comments in the ranking algorithm, and see what influence that has on the toxicity of the overall experience.
I mean if ten thousand people have responded to something, I would really rather read a few responses where someone made the effort to type out a few hundred words and what they wrote became popular. This doesn't guarantee it will be sane, cogent, etc. but it's better than staring at a wall of one line haters and trolls, which Twitter harassment victims always reference as one of the most traumatic parts of the experience.
