While individual nodes are not decentralized the federated network as a whole is. It is ultimately up to you to choose a well-federated, fast, and reliable instance that meets your criteria for information freedom and user protections. You can find an uncurated list here(https://instances.social/list) or a curated list of instances committed to "active moderation against racism, sexism and transphobia." here(https://joinmastodon.org/communities).
My instance while valuing user protection, errs on the side of information freedom as a valuable principle to protect as a whole. Both Mastodon and Peertube include pretty effective and comprehensive moderation tools to ensure you never see what you do not want to see, but that decision is not made for you on my instances.
The content policy below applies to both instances- Moderation will be minimal and limited to abusive or illegal content, ultimately we want to foster an inclusive environment without draconian, biased, puritan, or emotional moderation. Moderation is taken care of by server host & volunteers. NSFW content is allowed but must be blurred by default. Gore/Porn/Nudity = NSFW. Any content that abides by Illinois, New York City, New York State, and U.S. Law is allowed.
Server Specs: i7-9700k 512GB NVMe SSD 64GB DDR4 1Gbps
Backend Infrastructure- Hosted in NYC, Wasabi S3 storage backend, with BunnyCDN as CDN provider for both instances.
Who we are- This instance is ran voluntarily. I have been a server administrator for going on 10 years now starting with a passion for gaming private servers and evolving into running a business that offers web/service hosting for various clients & personal projects. These instances will not disappear overnight given my track record with various volunteer services(Tor Non-Exit Relay, Free VPN for my Mumble, Mumble, Various websites for musician/artist friends, that I have and still host).
Why we created this instance- Freedom of speech & information is paramount in a free society. While not legally obligated, centralized platforms have increasingly infringed on societal and moral obligations to appease advertisers & coddle the fragile.
How long we plan to maintain this instance- Indefinitely
How we will pay for this instance- Donations, Personal Funds.
More instances are in the works and I plan on hosting more instances for the community and web at large that follow the same principles, Gitlab, Pixelfed(ActivityPub), and Funkwhale(ActivityPub) instances immediately come to mind.