I used federated services like Mastadon before its own "Eternal September" and it feels to me, subjectively obviously, as someone who was on the Internet when Gopher, Telnet, MUDs, and USENET were basically it (except email) that there's this new obsession with moderation and walling off networks.

Whatever happened to self-moderating? I have higher standards for my speech and on-line conduct than any TOS. Many others do too. Plus, I know how to use software that allows "kill-files" and won't use any that doesn't give me the ability to "moderate" others if I want by just filtering it.

Vetting? It's a global network. If you want vetting spin up a Linux on Linode or something and invite only,ssh only, and create a forum.