I mighty like this article and your parting sentence.

Yet ...

This is the holy grail of free speech the way I see it. Unfortunately, existing institutions are so wedded with the commercial (social) media who, in turn, are inextricably tied with "algorithms" for whom, human 'attention' is commodified and in turn, has roped in the very institutions you mention, it is difficult to envisage an alternate reality, if you will.

Fediverse (not just Mastodon, Mastodon is a loose confederation of instances in that universe) at the moment is nothing but a network of loose sites, operated by volunteers who sustain them pretty much out of pocket or subscriptions (a few have gone in the other directions and are ostracised such as pawoo.net), but by and large the financial models are predicated on not accepting funds from the commercials entities; this is an unprecedented experiment in the voice of the Commons, if you will. A space to watch.