I remember Mastodon [1] was this free, open source social media network for micro blogging, which was against censorship and centralisation. Slowly but surely, the politics of the people developing the system became clear. They actively banned Gab [2], an otherwise compatible network, on the basis of politics.
I am extremely hesitant to get involved in these "with us or against us" projects.
Dude. This is getting OT. Since I've never cared about M.
Anyway, I can assure that using AntiX was simpler/more hasslefree than using plain Debian. Because they give a shit about not including needed drivers for hardware relying on "big bad binary blobs" (Oh Noez!1!!) on their installation media, instead just focusing on getting things done, or rather UP on crappy hardware in innovative ways. That aside you're free to remaster that thing, once it's running, to your hearts content, removing anything you wouldn't want, or adding anything which is missing, styling, theming, choosing window-manager or desktop-environment, potentially making YOUR personalized installation media even smaller, and thus using even LESS RAM, thereby running more stuff even faster.
All by simply pressing a few function-keys during initial boot/install, and easy clicking in their graphical tools, afterwards.
If you'd apply your reasoning thoroughly to all the stuff you're using, you should probably disconnect from the net right now, never come back again, and try to live in a cabin in the woods, sustaining yourself. Have fun with that.
I am extremely hesitant to get involved in these "with us or against us" projects.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)