On Twitter (Tweetdeck), an important functionality was the search column, where you could have a term like "UAP report" and you'd get a columns with all the results in it.
Can Mastadon do that? Is it even possible with the distributed nature?
@mickwest not exactly the same but you can follow hashtags which will put them in your timeline. Just need to encourage people to use #hashTags. They work better than search strings (when used) as hashtags reflect author context/intent. Mastodon web UI has an advanced mode (enabled in settings) which make it look like #tweetDeck and allows hashtags (among other things) to be pinned to different columns.