@cyclingalps Tags are really important here, yes. You cannot search posts by text, only by tags. This is by design because of the distributed system, but also ideologically, to make it difficult to seek out people only to bother them, or for other bad reasons we now know well from the monolithic social networks.

Another difference is that favs are nice but do nothing for post visibility or discoverability. No one else can see your favs. The only way to share stuff is by tags or to boost posts.