The beauty is it doesn't matter if some mastodon admin is an asshole, you can be that asshole or find someone else who isn't.

I'm not aware that this was a common practice in periods of early email adoption.

> I must have missed the part of internet history where people were constantly banned from their emails by capricious administrators for vague ToS violations.

I have friends on Mastodon for some 5+ years and this isn't really an issue. If it actually keeps happening than either the instances you're picking are run by teenagers, or you're actually engaging in some sort of a behavior that perhaps warrants a ban?

Personally, am running my own instance so this is not a concern but the larger ones with good reputation tend to be mature about this. I'd recommend joining a well established instance but avoid the absolutely huge ones like mastodon.social