I'm not on Twitter or Mastodon, but I think the point is that it's federated. Twitter has a single owner who determines how the platform behaves. That includes content moderation, but also other things like which messages become visible, how many ads there are, etc. If the current owner, whomever that might be, changes the policies in a way you don't like you're out of luck: that's what the platform looks like for you now. If you'd invested a lot of time and energy into that platform you're either stuck with it or you lose that investment.

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On the other hand, a federated protocol is more like email. If I don't like how Google's spam filter works, or I don't like their UI changes I can move to another email provider who does things differently and I can still exchange emails with my friends and family. Similarly, if my current Mastodon server changes owners and they start moderating in a way I don't like I don't have to give up on Mastodon, I just change servers.

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To me it seems like these federated protocols are a smarter way to build a community as you're not beholden to the whims of one person who might decide to buy the platform - you simply can't buy all of Mastodon just as you can't buy all of email.

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It could be that some people just don't like Elon. Maybe even most of them. But I think maybe some of them realized that building a community on a platform like twitter is fragile and Mastodon seems less fragile.