I refrain from any of those X, mastodon, etc. so let me ask a question:

are all equally bad? Or same bad but a different aspect? E.g. I read often here that X has more disinformation, and right wing propaganda, while mastodon here was called out on another topic.

Maybe somebody active in different networks can answer that.

Mastodon depends a lot on which instance you're at. Smaller more focused communities can be truly excellent, way better than bigger social medias.

The open ones where anyone can sign up have been a horrible experience to me. It's left me feeling that mastodon is bloat and a forum would suffice.

Moderation and the algorithms used to generate user feeds both have strong impacts. In the case of mastodon (ie activitypub) moderation varies wildly between different domains.

But in general, I'd say that the microblogging format as a whole encourages a number of toxic behaviors and interaction patterns.

X doesn't let you use trans as a word and has Grok spewing right-wing propaganda (mechahitler?). That self-selects into the most horrible people being on X now.