I'm really enjoying Mastodon. I have not encountered any of the censorial tone that the author complains of - not only has no-one criticised any of my posts, but I haven't seen this on anyone else's posts either. It feels like early usenet rather than early Twitter, for sure. But that's a feature. I am uninterested in a "critical mass" of people, because that has always become a shitshow. I follow people who post interesting things, and I don't care if I don't see everything they post. It works for me, I'm glad it exists. I hope it doesn't get more popular.