Think about it; instead of those in charge or the instances deciding who they don’t want to be federated with and thus restricting content for the users, it would be better if users were able to block entire instances instead.
We’d be able to curate our own browsing experience so much better without admin/mod drama influencing the rest of us.
Edit: Alright so maybe not exactly replace defederation, but it should still be an option available to us, and in general should become the default action before defederation IMHO.
it shouldn’t be hard to see how that’s a bad solution.
Like a supermarket stops selling yoghurt because the manager doesn’t like it so now they tell you to just have cream cheese for breakfast.
If you’re looking at instances here like supermarket then yeah, it doesn’t make sense. If you start looking at them as communities whose ideals should align to yours (and other users on it), then it makes perfect sense for you to just shift to a different instance.
It’s more like you’re going to the vegan grocery store and you’re upset that you can’t find chicken stock
The problem comes when the vegan store has items you want but they decided that they will not distribute them to stores that also sell chicken stock. And if that happens with multiple other cases you’ll be forced to visit multiple stores to get your groceries.
Which wouldn’t be that weird if it wasn’t because all those stores belong to the same “universal general store” chain that was originally designed so you would only need to visit your closest store to access all products.
i think it’s more like going to a different supermarket.