>IMO, legalizing it would let creators own their brand, get rid of exploitative race-to-the-bottom content, and give buyers/sellers confidence/acceptance to pursue their needs in a regulated and safe way.

I'm all for legalization, but I think this idea of "giving power to self hosted content" will go as well as pretty much any other blog site that's been replaced by tumblr, medium, wordpress, or ugh... Twitter. Yes, people would rather type out rants 300 characters at a time over 20 posts than use a proper word processing unit.

Anyways, legalization won't solve the algorithm race. We're still dealing with those issues even on sites that ban 18+ content.