You're making the exact same logical fallacy you're pointing out. The reason free speech alternatives tend to be filled with less than desirable types is precisely because they're alternatives. Who are you going to disproportionately attract as early adopters? It's the same reason anti-Musk driven alternatives to Twitter are also failing. Instead of having a normal sampling of society, you end up with a hardcore bias which is offputting to most of everybody except those of that bias.
I also think Threads is perhaps a reasonable challenge to the idea that society wants moderation. Unlike the anti-Musk Twitter alternatives it started with a massive and mixed userbase and was a completely viable alternative, yet it almost immediately collapsed. It's really hard to see why without looking to the fact that were also featuring the sort of "moderation" that historically only comes as a bait-and-switch after a platform is extremely well established.
The reason people stopped using it was because after the initial install they realised it was missing basic features like a web app, search, chronological feed etc.
Those have now been added and reports from popular users is that engagement across the board is increasing again. Far from collapsing and well on its way to being a true Twitter alternative.
Multiple third party reports [1] are showing the site has lost ~80% of daily active users and of the < 10 million daily active users left, time spent in the app has decreased from nearly 20 minutes, to less than 3. I'm left to reference third party sites since Meta stopped reporting their numbers officially when it started cratering. That scale of collapse is unlikely to be due to the lack of effective search or a chronological feed.
I also think Threads is perhaps a reasonable challenge to the idea that society wants moderation. Unlike the anti-Musk Twitter alternatives it started with a massive and mixed userbase and was a completely viable alternative, yet it almost immediately collapsed. It's really hard to see why without looking to the fact that were also featuring the sort of "moderation" that historically only comes as a bait-and-switch after a platform is extremely well established.