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In your opinion, what's the difference between a mastodon instance having such contents because a user posted it; and twitter having such contents because a user posted it?

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Twitter can demonstrate a procedure in place to deal with the problem, that is proportional to the size of the problem. An individual's procedures can only be proportional to their available time. The law will still say you should put up a server only if you can comply with the regulations it requires, and a defense based on "I'm doing my best to comply" will fail if your best is not good enough.

Twitter can afford an army of lawyers.

Not only that, companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have full time people dedicated to dealing specifically with illegal content. They don't have many full-time employees (they can't as these positions often require very specific contracts with the Department of Justice for handling this type of evidence) which has resulted in at least two cases of employees sustaining pretty bad mental health problems:

http://mashable.com/2017/01/13/microsoft-employees-sue-ptsd-...

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