For me it's less about trust and more about practicality. If you are coordinating live in person while collaborating that is a bit different than trying to edit a doc multiple people are in, all remotely. When I had said it's not fun that's the case I had in mind.

Linus actually mostly deals only with trusted subsystem leads. They may choose to deal with less trusted contributors, but I wouldn't say the Linux kernel development process is low trust. Many of those folks have worked together for decades.