For the sake of refreshing outdated information here, Mastodon 4.4 does now show remote favourite and boost counts where available (see https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/07/mastodon-4-4-for-devs/) and also has an experimental feature to pull in remote replies. Obviously it will take some time for servers to update to the newer release, but we’re moving forward to improvements here!
Personally I use third party apps like Sill, Fediview and Murmel and Phanpy which all have versions of algorithmic timelines for catchup. Whether something of this kind of built in to Mastodon in future is still open for discussion, but I’m not aware of a plan to spend time on it in the next couple of releases at least.
The upcoming 4.4 release has a generator based on a template, which was this one. We will look into whether we need to put that feature on hold from the 4.4 release while we work through this, however, yes the idea is that there would be a template set of terms that any instance could customise and adopt.
Legal stuff is complicated and we're not all, always, experts at everything. FWIW https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821
pretty sure the answer is no, specific hardware only.