We now have a single “following” timeline where you see posts from people you follow + comments from people you follow (but only when they reply to people you also follow). When we did our testing this was the preferred option for most people.
However, this is only “version 1” and we will introduce options to create your custom timelines and exactly tweak what you see.
Yes, post and replies. But still is missing a lot of notes compared to same timeline on other clients. I think it's because of this gossip model.