Well said. I've been on mastodon for about three years now and there a sudden influx of people griping about Twitter on mastodon and it's super annoying.
I’m also finding out that my preferred home server is blocked by a lot of others as I discover and try to follow people I've known on Twitter that just joined mastodon. Fortunately I've got an alt on a server about nobody blocks so new users considering joining somewhere should consider that. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be many good tools for finding that out.
Do you know why it's blocked by a lot of others? Widely blocked servers are in that state for a reason. The reason might ultimately be "server admin is unable to do moderation," which adds to the moderation and potentially legal burden of the other server admins if they don't defederate that instance.
MMasnick's moderation speedrun article, although targeted at emerald boy, applies equally (mostly) to every new Mastodon instance admin. Unless your instance is locked down to just you. Or you and a couple of close friends.
Oh yes, I know why it's blocked. There is no moderation and a couple nasties interacting with people on other servers early on brought that down on us. It's mostly self policing and block lists these days. Generally a fun group but there's things that come up in the free speech area some people don't want to hear.
No matter, I'm also on another server that's highly technical and federation seems to be working fine.
DistroTube (A tech youtuber) pointed out this would probably happen - Mastodon servers seem to be a more polite place, and legions of upset twitter uses would just not fit into that culture.
On the flipside, I was last on twitter in 2020. Joined again recently out of curiosity, and it's a much more pleasant site. (Not attributing this to Musk, as I was not on twitter immediately before him). No longer has clickbait partisan news articles all over the front page, and it seems much easier to just follow chill people you find amusing rather than tempting you with cortisol spiking arguments all the time. YMMV.
Counteranecdata: a nontrivial number of people I talk to have been leaving Twitter because their feeds are suddenly filled with MAGA ragebait and coded bigotry, which is the absolute straw for them.
2020 was the height of Trumpism, so it's possible that it really is calmer even so, or it might be more calm for new accounts for some reason? I'm certainly not planning to sharecrop on the Elmo plantation to find out personally.
Weird, when I look at my feed it's either people I follow, people they follow (some of whom I've decided to mute), and their replies to people I don't follow.
Pretty easy to curate to me (if someone engages with too much "Ragebait", unfollow them), but I can't speak for everyones feed.
I’m also finding out that my preferred home server is blocked by a lot of others as I discover and try to follow people I've known on Twitter that just joined mastodon. Fortunately I've got an alt on a server about nobody blocks so new users considering joining somewhere should consider that. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be many good tools for finding that out.