Being Mastodon an open source software every Instance administrator can modify it to meet the needs of the people on that Instance.
For example: as some of you have notices, my posts can be longer than the standard 500 digits. That's because recently the community on my Instance, decided to add more digits to meet the fact that we engage often complex arguments that needs longer explainations.
Another italian instance called Cisti that's very centered about reducing competition and #gamification on social modified the software so that their profiles don't show anymore the real number of their followers. If a user of Cisti has 3000 followers, his public counter will say that they are 42.
(Why 42? You'll guess 😉)