Royal Road has its own issues such as author groups on Discord colluding to drive up member’s “Rising Star” rankings, and drive down the stories of authors they don’t like. Also, very inconsistent moderation policies that highly favour certain authors over others who just so happen to be friendly with mods, etc.

I also don’t believe it’s open source, so I’m not sure how it’s really any “more free” than any other fanfic platform out there in the fediverse sense.