I decided to give Mastodon another shot here recently, I found exactly one promising leftist instance, mastodon.lol. Bills itself as an "LGBT-friendly antifascist mastodon instance"
I watched another user get banned for saying that Azov were neonazis and I got banned for sticking up for them, then as part of his 240V power trip the admin posted a pity thread where he claimed we called him literally Hitler.
The only other leftist instance I saw welcomed all socialists except "authoritarians" so I assume it's either a socdem or sectarian anarchist instance.
TL;DR - Mastodon hasn't changed at all, it's still ran by power-tripping micro tyrants
Incredibly easy. Mastodon itself doesn't "suck", it's actually very cool if you want to create some private group. It's more like "trying to find good, public already-existing leftist spaces on Mastodon sucks"
Like, I plan on running a mastodon instance for friends and family and I think it's gonna be sweet, like our own private FB.