Sure, I could see that. I just wanted to clarify that mastodon.social is an instance, not the instance. It’s not a special blessed server. If you turn on your own new server tomorrow, other servers will treat it identically to that one.
Also, moderation policies vary wildly. The instance I run moderates much differently than mastodon.social, which tends to get a lot of criticism for being seen as chronically under-moderated, if anything.
Just to clarify, my account was banned without a reasons mentioned. The „reason“/cause field is empty. I didn’t insult anyone, I didn’t break any laws, I didn’t call to unalive people. I didn’t violate TOS. I just dared to criticize the praise of the former East German regime, called it an „Unrechtsstaat“ which is not a controversial opinion and even part of the school curriculum. They shot their own people ar the border.
I think at least one of their moderators was insulted by that personally.
I believe you. I absolutely would not have suspended your account for that. But in so many other cases, they’re too slow to respond to reports of spammers, scammers, etc.
I reported several spammers impersonating with posts like „click here to verify your account“ phishing links and they disappeared in less than 2 minutes. There is little arguing about malicious content, it‘s about political and „tone“ related moderation. You can‘t be successful by just doing X but with an authorian left point of view. It‘s just the other side of the populistic, hateful spectrum. Some people want it, I get it. I‘m still running several accounts on other instances publishing open data and aggregating news (cycling and chess related) but the content I want to read is not created by people on the Fediverse.
Also, moderation policies vary wildly. The instance I run moderates much differently than mastodon.social, which tends to get a lot of criticism for being seen as chronically under-moderated, if anything.