Hyperliterate in one, semi-literate in two, and a self-taught programmer in three.
That's an unusual sandwich of a sentence.
A policy is built by informed consent. There has to be a process and a reasoning and human hands who can be held accountable when things aren't done right. I don't think any Fedi instances are doing "policy" by that definition. And that's entirely because they don't want their users/trolls to use/game the system, I believe.
In my experience, the problem with small instances isn't content quality or community, it's moderator/administrator transparency and competency.
I'd be more comfortable with self-hosting my actual data somewhere, and just having an instance or the central store point to my data. I'd want to get to apply rules for who gets access to my data. It would be a lot easier to spin up a small data store with a few tools on it than a full instance.
Not with what we currently have for technology and knowledge. So not in my lifetime will that be a practical option.
They hopefully will also notice how LOW engagement is with ads, and retreat accordingly.