The “we started uploading” is a can of worms.

At some point, the “we” will be sued unless the legal paperwork with consent from the authors is well done. Not to mention the ton of copyright materials and music that are actually licensed for use on YouTube but not anywhere else, not to mention everything that is clearly worthy of copyright strikes but YouTube failed to notice they were serving.

While YouTube may have the legal muscle to deal with copyright infringement and appease the rights owners with some checks, a network of volunteers is not equipped to play those “games.”

As much as I love the Fediverse, it’s amazing that Mastodon users see this feature as a threat. By the way, any decent app implemented quoting years ago.

A nice example is https://castopod.org/

I do not think it’s a good idea to isolate people in cults in their own echo chambers… although my faith in humanity and basic decency has seen better days, I still believe good examples matter.

Never had a reason to block an instance, here or in mastodon.

Not counting WordPress, that I really (really!!!) dislike (just because; your mileage may vary), I would say that Writefreely is the closest to traditional blog platform with activitypub baked in.

You can try it on https://writefreely.org/instances

I like the concept of the fediverse, just like I liked Fidonet back in the 80’s (that allowed BBSs to “exchange” both forum contents, called “echomail”, and private messages).

I have some issues on sustainability (hosting costs money, moderation and system maintenance can be a pain) and the “donation” model. My solution is that while I host for myself, and don’t really mind having some guest on my platform, I don’t take / accept donations - ever. My instance dies the moment I don’t have the resources to maintain it (money, time or patience). The main reason I don’t take donations is really simple: I don’t want to owe anyone anything, this is not a job or a burden I have to carry.

I have been hosting systems for 35+ years, and it’s all good with no money involved. It’s a blast dealing with the tech, really love it. Most of my systems and either one or two users (me and the wife). :-)

You know you can host your own instance, with your rules, and every like-minded individual can join you (either locally or exchanging federated content with your instance).

That is what I did, btw, not because of “moderation” related issues, but because I don’t want to freeload on someone’s resources.

To be honest I don’t get what your problem is. This is not criticism; I just have no idea.