I've tried various Fediverse services such as Mastodon and Lemmy, and, based on my experience, I've noticed a stronger tendency towards censorship, self-censorship, and ingroup behavior. In comparison, platforms like Twitter and Reddit still feel freer. But overall, the best solution is to use your own website for everything. But too much censure really stifles social media.
Instead of "censorship", I'd say "moderation". To pick a random example, suppose you're on an instance run by, and dedicated to, right-wing politics. It may block connections from servers meant for and run by devout communists. The reverse would probably also be true. No one's saying fascists or communists can't run their own server. They're saying "I don't want to hear this stuff". It's legal to be an anti-Semite, b…
There's a shared covenant and there's shared block lists, both of which heavily influence what the norm is on the larger Mastodon network. Perhaps an even larger dynamic are activist-type admins that have an extremely low tolerance for content countering their political beliefs and will blackmail other admins into enforcing a block of a user or entire instance.
None of this is a shocking revelation as a large portion of older Mastodon users are known for their excessive safety-ism. It's a perpetual conflict on the network versus those that want to be more forgiving and pragmatic.
Anyway, the bottom line is that mainstream Mastodon is a left to far-left network, and content is moderated as such. The idea "just pick another server" doesn't really apply.