> If this is a major concern for a mastodon user, they will need to either host their own instance or find an instance with as lax moderation policies as possible (and deal with the risk that other interests could interpret that as toxic and ban the whole instance).
If by being open and liberal (in the non-political sense) one risks being banned then essentially it's punishment (or the threat of punishment) for defection and the outcome is for everyone to end up being governed by the censors. The suggestion to then "host your own instance" looks a lot like "build your own X" that we had prior to Musk's take over of Twitter from people who didn't really care about the problem (or even see it as a problem). Do you really think people will start hosting their own instances for this?
If by being open and liberal (in the non-political sense) one risks being banned then essentially it's punishment (or the threat of punishment) for defection and the outcome is for everyone to end up being governed by the censors. The suggestion to then "host your own instance" looks a lot like "build your own X" that we had prior to Musk's take over of Twitter from people who didn't really care about the problem (or even see it as a problem). Do you really think people will start hosting their own instances for this?