[vidarh]

Usenet was a wild west outside of the big 7 which was full of moderated groups and policies, but there definitely Is No Cabel [1] keeping an eye on things. Even many alt.* groups had people trying with various degrees of success to keep things on topic and moderated.

The Fediverse is the same way: You can have the wild west, but much of it is kept separate with active defederation so you may need to find smaller instances, run your own or simply have a second account. That doesn't mean it's not there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Cabal

[mcv]

Also, many servers didn't carry alt.* at all (or very selectively) because it was such a wild west.