My thesis would be: Network-level moderation of content on federated networks leads to better moderation, a higher signal to noise ratio, better conversations, a better atmosphere and a much higher total value for users.
If an unmoderated mess were great and size the best measure of success Twitter and Facebook would be great contributions to civilization and not dragging it down into a brown swamp. People taking a break from social media would not start feeling happier.
For me, as a climate scientist on Twitter, the system became much more useful and much better conversations became possible when I discovered “block together”, a service where a group of people blocks other accounts jointly. That gave me a block list of a few 100k accounts and reduced the moderation work I had to do, which always comes too late, after the harassment, after having wasted previous life time.
A large majority of people belong to groups Fascist hate and harass. Those are voices we should also listen to. There is no lack of information. Purely thinking in terms of accessing as much information as possible is 19th century thinking. What we need now are ways to find relevant information and the flood of BS and bad vibes makes that harder to find, that is an attack on the freedom of relevant speech. And something we also need to consider in the 21st century.