I am against defederations being decided by instance admins. Lemmy needs (kbin being more mature project at least has domain blocking) tools to let users decide themselves what they want or don't want to see. Are you an adult or you need others to decide for you? I have blocked lemmygrad and other tankie/nazi (same shit) instances (domains) myself. If I don't want to see eg. transgender stuff then I don't cry about it but just block it. Grow a pair and do the same.
While I disagree with your opinion on admins, I appreciate the sentiment. But if you want to be on an instance that isn't defederated or view any content, run you own instance.
That said, the ability for users to moderate the content they see on their own profile could definitely use more flexibility. The ability to block communities as a user is good, but they should absolutely also be able to block instances on their own. Beyond that, the ability to filter out content based on keywords (title, content, urls) would also be a nice addition.
Coming from RiF on Android, the app had filtering and let me say, being able to block Elon, Kanye, Meta, TikTok, a bunch of shit spewing fascists, etc made my Reddit viewing experience much better. This was, of course, after already leaving all of the default subs and finding niche communities but for some reason people had a hard-on for those topics and I could literally not care any less about them.
I don't mind filtering out things I don't like, if it's a me-problem. If I find my feed has too many "lOoK aT mY nEw BoOmStIcK" posts from gun-toting idiots, I'll block them. I may find gun ownership unnecessary in a civilised society and the cult around it stupid, but 'murica is arguably father from civilisation than I'm used to and they're well within their rights. So that's on me.
Nazis, however, I consider a we-problem. It's our collective duty as society to make it clear to those dimwits, that there is no room in civilisation for their backward mindset and they can either adapt or get lost. If they can't play by society's rules then they can't play at all.
So instances that are "just a little" or "not excessively" racist/fascist/intolerant should be defederated just like the all-out ones.
and other tankie/nazi (same shit) instances (domains) myself.
didn't see that yet but at least some user with a name in that direction.
Anyway, I found it quite not amusing to see this stuff on my second day of using Lemmy - which was 2 weeks ago or so. Honestly, I've seen enough online communities degenerate and having a few power users/enthusiasts who like fine tuning every setting is not enough to get a healthy community going.
I think if Lemmy doesn't get it's shit together in that regard, it'll be like Mastodon where there are alt-right communities powered by it and then another normal (or whatever you want to call it?) part. However I've been quite surprised when my first subscriber was some alt-right dude. That was enough for me to delete my account.
At the moment I see chances 50/50 that Lemmy can make it. But this highly depends on:
making it convenient for non-technical people (discoverability across instances)
have a reasonable filtering system (if it's fully democratic and it works that would be awesome. but to be realistic, that would be a first...)