The other beautiful thing is that if you aren’t satisfied with the behavior of mods and admin on one instance, there are literally hundreds of others to choose from. You aren’t stuck dealing with bad actors if you want to participate. And if moderation of a particular community upsets the users, they are free to move to or create a similar community on a different instance.
The major downside of this is that it’s going to create echo chambers, but that’s unavoidable. It’s not like this is a new problem. Communities that reject outside ideas outright have existed long before the internet.