They're not "advocating for voluntary censorship", they're simply pointing out that the Peertube (and the Fediverse in general) needs to avoid being the dredges of the internet.
I don't think that's quite right. It just needs to make sure there's plenty available in addition to the dredges of the internet. Sometimes the dredges are useful to be able to sift through, but that can't be the only thing on offer and ideally users would be able to filter that stuff out when it isn't wanted.
A Twitter alternative could be full of neo-nazis, butbif my feed is only populated with people I follow them I would never know or care.
The issue isn’t hiding it away - be it by user or other - it’s that it hampers growth in general when you’re all of a sudden the platform of the deranged. It’s fair to question whether it’s seeing actual use outside of those communities.
(It might be telling that we’ve spent this many comments discussing it rather than pointing out e.g GNOME/Blender/etc use it - it’s not like it’s all bad)
Platforms get into the business of censorship when they attempt to currate content (handpicked or algorithmic). Engagement is obviously much lower if you aren't running an algorithm designed to hook everyone on doom scrolling, but plenty of people still happily use an RSS reader and just go away when their list of new posts is empty.
There is still a comparatively small bit active community of webrings, blog rolls, etc today. What I'm less certain of is whether the driver really consumers chasing the brightest light or platforms taking advantage of basic psych tricks to drive addictive behavior (or both).
We can do better than jumping to that conclusion. ;P