"make it work"

It already does. I find enjoyment on this interconnected platform. Perhaps by "make it work" they mean make it work for massive monetization which is what we are trying to escape from in the first place. Not everything has to be about money!

Though this content could flourish in pockets of the fediverse, the scary scenario of prevalent child sexual abuse material is not the case. There are many moderation tools, including shared blocklists, that prevent it. However, the idea that the fediverse is full of harmful content was used by Elon Musk to justify his anti-competitive decision to block links from X to Mastodon.

Didn't he unban someone who posted one of the worst CSAM videos known?