@aral
First and foremost we must realize that both algorithmic and human moderation achieve exactly the same thing. Both limit what we can say and who hears it. Speech is no more free on Mastodon than it is on Twitter. On each platform there are things you cannot say without getting thrown out for it. Personally I prefer Mastodon's style of moderation to Twitter's, but both restrict what we can say. On Twitter, for example, I can't say what I really think of Elon Musk. On Mastodon I can't say what I really think of the Ukraine-Russia war. I'm OK with that. For each subject there is an appropriate platform. I talk about them there. What's important to me is not so much what I say, as it is what I hear. I already know what I think. I need to learn what other people think. I can't do that in an echo chamber.

If Musk actually starts charging to participate, I'm out of there, too. He can't have my money. In the meantime, it's to my personal benefit, and to the benefit of the anarchist cause, that I stay.

You don't have to post on Twitter to read what other people say. I've been shadow banned there for years. I've never had more than a handful of followers. At the moment I have a little over 700, at least half of them are bots. It's not a good place to make friends. My best friends there are ones I know from real life, most of them from before Twitter even existed. That's not why I post over there. Over here I'm preaching to the choir. Also, over here I'm only exposed to the opinions of other anarchists. I've been an anarchist activist for nearly six decades.

(See: https://kolektiva.social/@LevZadov/110269139479494358)

I already know what other anarchists are going to talk about. Anarchist thought is interesting, and I like anarchists as people (some more than others, of course), but we're an an extremely narrow slice of humanity and we talk about an extremely narrow slice of the human experience. I'm interested in the whole story. There's more to political economics than anarchist opinions. There's more to life. I want to know what other kinds of people are thinking. I don't get that here.

In real life, I'm completely surrounded by heavily armed Americans. I really want to know what's on their minds. Someday my very life my depend on it. And there's more to humanity than Americans. As an anarchist, I'm an internationalist by definition. While I am somewhat limited by only speaking English, on Twitter I am exposed to English speakers around the world. Where else can I follow grassroots reports and opinions about India, Nigeria, Australia, etc. that aren't exclusively the opinions of anarchists? They sure don't turn up in mainstream media. Grassroots opinions are the great lacuna of mainstream media.

When spent 26 years tending the counter at Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore, I got to meet people from all over the world, and hear first hand and face to face what was really going happening on the ground where they came from. Not all were anarchists. A lot were just tourists, but they all kept me pretty informed. Twitter does that. Mastodon doesn't.

I'm far more interested in the reach of my ears than the reach of my mouth, so I don't care that a lot of people on Twitter don't like me or what I have to say. I'm both pro-gun and pro-choice, so you can imagine who hates me over there. Even the haters, though, provide me with data that enhances my understanding of what's going on in the world outside of the anarchist ghetto.

I heartily recommend that you at least read Twitter. It's like accompanying a graduate level sociology seminar on a field trip. If you don't want to post, don't post, but don't deprive yourself of the wealth of social data that Twitter provides. That's not the anarchist way. Anarchists want to know, and understand, everything there is to know on as personal a level as possible. As Bakunin put it, ". . . for work's sake as much as for the sake of science, there must no longer be this division into workers and scholars . . ."

Each and every one of us needs to study the vast humanity whose lives and cultures that anarchists purport to seek to improve. Otherwise we're just talking to ourselves in and endless, recursive, and largely irrelevant loop. Ignorance is not an option. We can't make the news not happen by switching stations at six o'clock. To stop up our ears and chant, "La, la, la, la, la" at the top of our lungs is supremely counter-productive. To achieve even our smallest goals we need to understand what other people think. If you don't like the news go out and make some. But first learn what we have to deal with when we do. Just a suggestion.