The alt social media are a good place to run away from algorithms and explicit mass manipulation from other big tech, be more free, independent, and spread ideas, but I also think that the fediverse is being filling with people with radical political ideologies, some kicked out of traditional social platforms for this same reason. I’m not saying that we can’t have discussions, but I think that many people are making their own echo Chambers in the fediverse.
That’s the problem with freedom. But it’s the wrong thing to restrict freedom for everyone in order to accommodate for such people. In a democracy you also put up with right, extreme and or stupid people. and for a good reason. I believe the correct way to handle this is to moderate, write good tools to assist with moderation, block them / don’t federate with these instances. But it’s probably alarming that alternative platforms could be associated with those people.
Personal freedom stops where everybody elses freedom begins. Extremists don’t have a place in a (modern) democracy as soon as they try to hurt other peoples freedom that doesn’t infringe on theirs in any way. Same sex marriage opposition, racial segregation, anti-secularism, etc. are not to be “put up” with. They are not democratic in any way shape or form, even if they claim to be and even if they are in the majority.
For some reason fediverse stuff (esp mastodon) has in-your-face branding that can only be replaced by editing templates. So instances are automatically associated with the project. Nobody would associate a specific forum software with an instance of it because they usually restrict the branding to the footer and let admins edit the theme from the control panel at least a little bit.