So far, this seems like a political grandstanding event, rather than a real transition.
I don't use Twitter or Mastodon, and don't intend to start with either.
So, this is an honest question: How does Mastodon regulate content of "tweets" or whatever they call posts? How is that different from Twitter? Is that difference really an improvement?
What I think I am seeing is that several of the "social media platforms" have been "regulating" posts with some obvious political bias. The most obvious subject was their long insistence that it is "false information" that there is a computer that belonged to the President's son that turned up in a repair shop with some data on it that makes it look like there may have been inappropriate activities with foreign governments. People had accounts blocked for reposting articles from the New York Post newspaper that turned out to be true.
So, it looks like the stated intent to "block hate speech" has been extended into blocking transmission of information that the site owners don't want transmitted for political reasons. That also is being applied to the policy debates about LBGQ issues, where disagreement is equated to "hate".
If it comes to the point where there is no social media site left where people can disagree and point out things that others wish would be kept quiet, we run the risk that our society will devolve into a batch of echo-chambers where people who all think alike are able to be radicalized by constant mischaracterization of those who are in the other echo chambers. That is an extremely destabilizing situation. It looks to me like that is what Musk is intending to avoid. I think it is a political stunt to try to imply that he is in favor of hate speech.
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