Though this content could flourish in pockets of the fediverse, the scary scenario of prevalent child sexual abuse material is not the case. There are many moderation tools, including shared blocklists, that prevent it. However, the idea that the fediverse is full of harmful content was used by Elon Musk to justify his anti-competitive decision to block links from X to Mastodon.
Didn’t he unban someone who posted one of the worst CSAM videos known?
Is it really self-hosting if someone else controls the data and software?