@BeAware any kind of social media suffers of 3 basic forms or rubbish hitting our timeline: (1) the abuse of the unsolicited direct message, (2) the abuse of the # hashtags, and (3) unsolicited adds (which in a way is platform centrally controlled version of the first form).
Hate and harassment come also in one of the same forms described above.
Without any moderation, your timeline could be polluted to the point of rendering it unusable and unbearable.
#Moderation (regardless of the mechanism) is a way of 'suppressing' some content, which immediately triggers different views about what should be moderated and what not.
There are very different approaches to moderation in the #Fediverse, from none or very little to very extreme and preemptive.
The fact that the apps are #OpenSource and run by individuals gives these individuals the power to define those policies, I don't think we can do much about that, and I don't think is wrong either as it creates some space for flexibility and diversity.
Of all the #MastoAdmin and moderators, the most important to us are the ones on the instance in which we 'live', because those are the ones who filter what we can see and the ones that would try to 'moderate us' and eventually suspend our account... all the others, are lesser relevant as if they don't want to read us, it is their loss... up to them.
There are a lot of sensible #MastoAdmins out there, so there is a bit of searching and asking around... or even better, go with someone who is an actual offline friend of us... that will improve a lot our experience.
I know both of us have taken the most extreme position, which is to run our own instances so we don't need to deal with this matter, but that may not be for everyone, so that is why I made the long-winded recommendation.