Your understanding is correct, on both points. The only content you’ll see from people you don’t follow is if an account you do follow “boosts” it (equivalent t

Your understanding is correct, on both points. The only content you’ll see from people you don’t follow is if an account you do follow “boosts” it (equivalent to a retweet), or if you browse the federated timeline (which shows you a bunch of posts from instances federated with yours). Indeed, if the author you are replying to would like to not see people celebrating their own identity and sense of self, they could simply unfollow these accounts.