This is something we are going to be dealing with a second time with the fediverse, instances now each have the unilateral right to determine their own code of ethics and culture.

We are going to have some growing pains as each instance chooses whether they should be in charge of curating access to the fediverse or if their users should be in charge.

Even if an instance decides in favour of absolute free speech, they are going to have to deal with the fact that they have no control over the moderation of other instances and the possibility that unlawful content will end up on their own server by proxy.

My instance is located in Australia and chose to block all NSFW focused instances to avoid the potential legal headache all together. I do believe in the future people will be able to spin-up a personal instance as easily as they can install Plex or Signal.