Article seems forced and comes to their conclusions based on poorly-informed opinions. For instance, this author seems to think that Mastodon is exempt from the bots and advertising because it is decentralized. However, I think the much more obvious reason is that it’s not popular; people don’t go there with their bots and advertisements. If it suddenly became popular, the bots/advertisements/“poor comment quality” would surely follow.

(Just be clear, I don’t mean literal website ads, I mean posts that advertise products and businesses, whether it be obvious or not.)