Some folks think that defederation is a bad thing. OK.

Here's a little experiment you can try at home.

1. Stop using GMail, Hey, or whatever email service you're currently using.
2. Set up your own mail server (there's instructions on the internet).
3. When the instructions say to use a Remote Black List just ignore them.
4. When the instructions say to validate domains, ignore those too.
5. When the instructions say to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC just let those slide.
6. Try to send / receive email
7. Also try to read your inbox. For added benefit turn on all notifications for received mail.

Voila. Now you have an unfettered email experience.

And this, class, is why defederation is useful.

Please send your comments to the overworked TA in the back of the room.

— Craig Maloney

tbh, there is no such instance. Not blocking any other instances is often a reason to be blocked by other instances.

An instance that blocks no one is in effect a "free" speech instance that prioritises the right to be bigoted over the need to provide safe spaces for folk. And that means that instances that value the need for safe spaces over "free" speech are going to block the instances that don't block anyone else as a means of creating and maintaining that safe space.

I don't have the answer but I share your sentiment.

One thing I hated about reddit is the mods would ban you for participating on certain subs. For instance, I got banned from r/WhitePeopleTwitter for commenting in a r/Conservative thread. (I was actually disagreeing with someone, but that's neither here nor there.)

The Fediverse feels like a worse version of that phenomenon. Entire communities are blocked off from each other by the admins of the instance. I fear that Lemmy might become a disjointed group of echo-chambers. Some might argue that reddit already is.

U might want to take a look at the federation map. It might be a bit overwhelming but in the settings on the bottom left you may chose blocked and allowed in order to get some insights on who federates with whom.

It's worth mentioning that most of the instances lemmygrad blocks are empty instances that a spammer was using, not populated instances our admins have a disagreement with.

We've got a few (or maybe just 1) folks that pop up with super vile NSFL stuff every couple months. They make new accounts wherever.

The only instances I think they've proactively blocked were wolfballs and exploding heads.

I'm on https://lemmy.world. Apparently the people running it also run a mastodon server with 160k I think? users, so this might be good.

So, something like that works for a "normal" acct I think. I doubt there's a way to avoid making alt accts if you also wanna explore alternative topics and lifestyles.

AFAIK, yes, the answer to have control on which instances are blocked is to run your own instance, that's actually what I did.

For a way to search the number of instances that block certain instance, I don't think there's something like that yet.