Exactly.

I'm interested in distributed applications (think BitTorrent, not ActivityPub), and my primary concern here is filtering. I want to be able to only see content from people I trust and people they trust (and so on), and if I do that well, I won't have to see a ton of crap. That's how regular relationships work, and I'd like to try my hand at it with anonymous relationships. Think something like Web of Trust, but adjusted for larger networks of people.

The Fediverse by design prevents this, while the internet of the old age had little if any guardrails against this specially since the platforms never really federated with another.

Did forum sites even federate? One forum sites would be dead and the next would have more activity. But what if the other forum with less activity was the one you wanted to use? The old internet was a good start but there's a reason why it's dominated by Instagram and Facebook, while email, you can use mostly any provider and not feel like you're left out.

if it ever becomes more popular the same assholes that ruin other online experiences will also wind up here.

That's kind of the glory of the fediverse, though. We can have communities using the same protocol that never interact with each other.

There can be completely separate fediverses that cater to different people.