Mastodon is like E-Mail: You chose who hosts your profile. YOu can send messages to people on other servers, but still the server which hosts your account, is your "home server": If it goes down, your account/profile is lost.
Also choosing your Mastodon server is about your personal interests: Mastodon servers have local timelines, which only show posts by users on the same server. These timelines often are topic related. E.g. on metalhead.club you will find more metal music content compared to e.g. mastodon.social.
Mastodon servers / instances group users by interest and still let all Mastodon users communicate with each other.
Btw: I don't consider the terms of use "leftist". They are quite neutral and generally "human friendly". Metalhead.club is not political, but the Terms of use try to prevent hate speech.