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What I suspect happens is that someone markets the fediverse as some sort of "safe space" (rather than a "pick your own server" social network*), then someone comes in with that expectation, and that leads to more toxicity than is really needed.
* An idea which is interesting in and of itself.
Part of the "content problem" might not even be a problem of users or content. It might just be basic content curation / collection. Right now, it is a bit of a hose pipe. Information is indiscriminately pulled in, if anyone shows a sliver of interest in it. Conversely, information that might be interesting is not pulled in, if someone doesn't already know about it.
Practically speaking, there is no way to subscribe to a particular related interest or anything. And that is one of the things mainstream social media kind of does. They guess at what someone is interested in, they guess at what content they might like, and they serve that. Of course, this model has it's flaws.
The fediverse is kind of anti social media in design because it goes out of it's way to *not do that*. It's not that particular users or content don't exist on social media. They do. But, generally, you might not see them and they might be buried by what someone is *actually* interested in finding. Likewise, particular types of users might engage with their own content, and that might keep them busy, rather than the subject being some sort of drama.
Then again, that is just a theory.