It partially depends on Zsh's NOMATCH and NULL_GLOB setopt:

NOMATCH - print error when glob doesn't match;

NO_NOMATCH - print literal GLOB character:

  setopt NOMATCH
  ls * => zsh: no matches found: *

  setopt NO_NOMATCH
  ls * => ls '*'

NULL_GLOB - when glob doesn't match, return blank; (Overrides NOMATCH):

  setopt NULL_GLOB
  ls * => ls ''

  # Brings behavior inline with RHEL/Bash4 defaults:
  setopt NO_NOMATCH

It does not "not do anything", it expands to a list of your files that have a filename starting with ~. You just don't happen to have any in the current directory ;)

And yes, this is a potential footgun:

  % touch ~test
  zsh: no such user or named directory: test
  % touch "~test"
  % ls ~*
  ~test
  % rm ~test
  zsh: no such user or named directory: test
  % rm "~test"
  % ls ~*     
  %

It kind of makes sense that if you have ~username and wildcards that you can then apply those wildcards to the username as well and not just real files and directories.

It says `tcsh` in the article.