How sad that people really believe that.
Erm, no, this comic explicitly says it's OK to be kicked off a platform for the things you say. Which is essentially mob-rule, or an arbitrary rule a community can invent on the spot to justify kicking you out. That's what you call authoritarian when someone/groups makes a decision to censor you on the basis of you having a different opinion.
It's not authoritarian, it's free speech as a principle. You can say what you want and everyone who is willing can listen. Everyone else doesn't have to listen. That is free speech.
You aren't kicked of the platform, you can still be part of the fediverse, in fact, there is plenty of instance that are willing to uphold the "no moderation free speech" fake principle to host trolls and alt-right who federate with everything that is legal.
It’s even more insidious than the power that Reddit moderators have because at least you can see that comments were deleted.
A platform designed specifically around federating giant censorship networks has nothing to do with free speech. The only free speech their is that someone can setup their own instance, but that’s no different than phpbb, which doesn’t make such a grandiose claim about free speech.
It's also untrue that an instance you run will be like phpbb, even if you don't get federated by larger mastodon instances, there are plenty of instances that federate with anyone who's not hosting illegal content or spam. And you can join those instances if you don't want to host.
This is free speech as a principle; nobody has to host you and you get an audience of poeple who are willing to listen. Nobody who doesn't want to listen has to listen. That second part is integral in true free speech.
And I would also point out that Mastodon or Pleroma work just fine federating small networks, they don't have to be "censorship networks", which I think is begging the question a bit.
It's only mob rule and authoritarian if you look at yourself and such a community in isolation. That is: when you get kicked out, you land utterly alone in a void. Much like being banished in old days from a tiny village.
But on line communities don't exist in isolation. They are embedded in a larger, complex, modern society where social identity is based on a layers of many social connections, and where your rights and freedoms are anchored in an established legal and constitutional framework. You also still very much belong to your family, close friends, work, school, neighbourhood and so on. (Unless you migrate and end up in a legal limbo; or live in a strict and authoritarian society)
Sure, you can claim authoritarian or censorship because someone isn't willing to listen to your opinion. But, depending where you live, that doesn't mean your constitutional rights in general were violated. Not by a long stretch. All it means is that a particular person or group of people are done listening to you. You're still very much free to go out and find like minded people.
You're also not entitled to admittance. Why? Because the vast majority of servers - whether that's IRC, Mastodon or Reddit - you'll join are managed privately. It means that you are a guest and your presence is allowed by the host as a courtesy. Much like you are also a guest when you enter a shop, a bar, a restaurant, a movie theater, a theme park,... The notion of private property implies that the owner - whether that's a person or a legal entity - is free to kick you off it if they feel the need to do so.
You could argue that you getting kicked out is an act of violence. But then the only entity that could conclusively assert your claim is a court of law. Any judge will verify your claim against a touchstone which is the prevailing legal framework such as it is. Since free speech only applies to the government, any claim between private citizen referring to this right won't hold in a court. Getting denied entrance or admission to a group won't be seen as violent either: private property owners have that right.
The only way forward would be to demonstrate intent in a way that you getting cancelled becomes a legal infraction: you got kicked out because of a clear, demonstrable discrimination against your identity: colour, race, creed, religion,... Which is extremely hard to establish before a court of law.
There's actually a paradox at the heart of all of this. Karl Poppers' Paradox of Tolerance. It states that a society that allows far reaching freedoms also comes with an individual moral responsibility to act tolerant towards differences between peoples. Sadly, some people will peruse those freedoms to promote intolerance and division. In order to protect freedom and basic rights, it's necessary to show intolerance against such intolerance.
The issue with this paradox is that it doesn't state where the line is to be drawn between what's acceptable and what's unacceptable. Worst case is that by being overzealous in showing intolerance against intolerance... society ends up curtailing the very freedoms and basic rights it purports to uphold.
It's exactly why it's so hard to legally assert that the intent with which you were kicked out from an on line community was discriminatory. Such a ruling needs to be extremely carefully considered as it might create a legal precedent that curtails other basic rights and leads to other, unintended, forms of legal inequality.
And so, it's important to have an ongoing debate and figure out a common moral framework to manage this conundrum. It's equally important to be activist in that regard and find well-founded arguments against ideas and beliefs that target basic human rights or outright dismiss the notion of a common understanding and respect towards fellow humans. The fine print with all of this, then, is that you have to be extremely careful not to become the very thing you purport to fight... which is exactly the kind of perception your statement about mob rule and authoritarianism risks creating.
In places where principles of government with respect for basic human rights are upheld by representative, mandated legal, executive and judicial bodies, you are free to contest that someone's opinion has damaged you before a court of law who will then assert your claim against a legal touchstone: the rule of law.
Libel, damaging the integrity, inciting violence against a particular, concrete group of identifiable persons or a single person, committing a prosecutable crime,... If a court of law finds that some party has overstepped their bounds, they will award civil compensation, or a corrective punishment (e.g. fines, prison time,...) None of that, however, is considered curtailing free speech rights unless you can make your case before a constitutional court.
The fallacy is assuming that Mastodon is (a) interchangeable with the fediverse (b) a single large unifying platform (c) a silver bullet solution which, contrary to centralized social media platforms, enables an utopian community devoid of human conflict.
Another fallacy is assuming that the public debate takes place in one big homogeneous public space. It does not. In the analogue world, there are countless clubs, associations, groups, factions, parties,... with their own meeting places, books, publications, journals, newspapers, periodicals and so on. For better or worse. The convergence of digital media into a few large platforms inadvertently have created such a perception, and capitalized on that perception as it served their private, business interests first and foremost.
Furthermore, subsequent scandals regarding large social media platforms created the backdrop for an alternative to come to the stage. Several technology outlets picked up on Mastodon. Created as a one-man effort by this young, idealistic developer, it fitted the narrative perfectly as an alternative that would break the dominance of big platforms over the public debate such as it is.
However, even though the software is published under an open source license, that doesn't negate intellectual ownership over one's creation. All it does is give license to use, modify and re-distribute the software under the same conditions. The original creator is still very much free to decide how to move forward implementing features, and espousing their own opinion freely. And you deciding to freely use of the software doesn't entitle you to a decisive vote on how the software evolves. For better or worst, the creator is perfectly free to say "Nope. Ain't doing that."
If anything, you are free to set up their own instance and decide to which instances to connect. You are free to fork Mastodon and change features to your own liking. You are free to build your own implementation of ActivityPub. You are free to promote your own implementation, set up your own network and recruit your own community. You are free to do all these things in many sovereign nations across the world who's constitution and legal framework provide those rights.
Of course, what makes all the difference is how people fundamentally treat each other. It's one thing to call out those who refer to others in derogatory, discriminatory and downright rejectable terms. It's quite another thing to assume that your free speech rights are being violated because another private person, or group of private persons, is unwilling to listen, let alone accept, your opinions.
Edit: I took the time and effort to clarify myself. I would like to ask for the courtesy to come up a proper argument in return, instead of a downvote which leaves everything and nothing to the imagination