If the goal is solidarity and community, creating a world where little feudal lords reign over independent territories and negotiate the terms of the interchange of ideas can hardly be the best answer. I very much understand that in times of rising authoritarianism such an escape into decentralised resistance is alluring to progressive political movements. But this is a temporary fix at best. It is not a progressive vision for what comes after. Decentralisation without social institutions that debate, define and – when necessary – enforce fairness and equality is a euphemism for survival of the fittest.
Imagine Mastodon had a governance system where all users, admins and minorities were equally represented. Imagine this system intervened in the practices of some admins. Right now I can only imagine the Mastodon community to react with an outcry about such an audacious attack on their free and decentralised kingdom. This reaction would be completely in line with libertarian impulses that are so very present in all things digital. Cyberlibertarians routinely invoke the “free internet” as a vague supreme ideal that has to be defended against any kind of collective, democratic governance. Their ideology is based on private control and decentralised market-based exchange. It has no use for community, solidarity and participation. It is founded on contempt for democratic intervention, a belief in the unique nature of the digital realm and the superiority of those controlling it. These ideas are very present in the Mastodon community as well. Most often this is not the result of an active ideological commitment to libertarian or right-wing views. It is, however, very open to being instrumentalised by these ideologies and it is reinforcing them – willingly or not.
This is basically an article arguing for a fedi equivalent of the UN.
Allow me to present a counterargument in partial disagreement. Isn't the greatest value derived not from the laziest among us, who can't be bothered to read much or to think, but rather from those who offer the most in service? i.e. from the most prolific posters rather than a mere collection of lurkers and low-volume posters? LW being merely "large" isn't the issue here.
And on that note, I do not have any firm stats but I thought that many highly prolific posters had moved elsewhere, at least part of the time? If I sort All by Top Week then about half of those accounts are on Lemmy.World, though e.g. TPM also has accounts on multiple other instances. Also, LW used to have ~80% of Lemmy accounts, whereas now it has "only" ~40% iirc, plus now PieFed also exists on the Threadiverse as well, so much progress has been made towards decentralization.
Of course, many people that remain may genuinely believe in the more "liberal"/centrist stance held by LW's admin team, regardless of popularity of their post content, and speaking of, the latter likely reflects a trend towards the proclivities of the Threadiverse as a whole. i.e., purity testing leads to smaller and smaller echo chambers, and while necessary (bc of e.g. the Paradox of Intolerance), should also be kept in mind to be constrained if the goal is to have the healthiest network. The recent banning of ALL content from certain artists - not just looking at individual submissions for racism, misogy, or anti-lgbtqia+ tendencies but the entire body of work from that artist - from comics communities is one example: that action reduces the available content for consumption, but in ways that the overall community desires, thus striving to achieve the maximum balance of friendliness and welcoming feeling in community members, by excluding certain types of content that would have turned people away from the community entirely. People can speak more readily and freely in a safer space than in the cacophony of a more toxic environment.
Speaking of, don't forget that somehow even facts themselves are debatable by some people, plus so very many people seem to have the agenda that bullying is okay when done by them but not in reverse, plus they attempt to claim that somehow not always listening to their drivel = bullying. Again citing the Paradox of Intolerance, retaining such "free speech" instances will most definitely constrain actual free speech across all Fediverse platforms.
So remember then that some people PREFER to be defederated from the likes of hexbear and lemmygrad and yes AN - that's not a detraction for them but rather a feature. Especially those who do not want to put in as much time individually curating their experiences on the Threadiverse, this is an attractive option for them, and they would seek it out even if they left LW. For example, PieFed.World is also the 5th largest PieFed instance. These are people who put in the effort to make an account on a new instances, giving up accessibility to modify their old content from the new account, and yet they actively chose the same admin team as LW. Which while decreasing (somewhat?) the power of the LW instance, yet further increases the power of that admin team - because people have actively sought it out, and not merely as a kind of default when fleeing Reddit but presumably as a conscious, informed choice.
I always block c/worldnews as one of the first things I do whenever I make an account on a new instance, so I am less informed about that one, but I wonder if some of the same thoughts apply - how many people consciously choose that moderation style vs. it happening to them unawares. I truly do not know which of these is more likely, just wondering.