I wanted to follow someone on scholar.social but could not as I happen to be on qoto.org --- random server I picked. So I reached out to the moderators of both. Both were kind and quick to respond. What I learned might be relevant for other academics:
Scholar.social is on the more restrictive end of what they accept, and qoto.org perhaps on the other end, enough so for scholar.social to have blocked qoto. Scholar.social blocks many other servers, by their own admission, but only qoto among those catering to academics.
My conclusion, you might want to avoid both, if you don't want to be blocked from following people on either server.
