The whole point of federation is that instead of joining a single centralized service, you’re joining the federation by joining a specific instance or creating your own instance. If you feel moderators on a certain instance are being heavy-handed you have the option to use a different instance which can still communicate with that other instance.
As the network topology is completely different on a federated platform, moderation actually happens in two layers; instance-to-user and instance-to-instance. Instances each have their own codes of conduct, which users on that specific instance are expected to respect. On top of that, instances also have the ability to block (defederate) with other instances if it is seen as necessary for the protection of the users of that instance.
You may be interested in how this works in practice on Mastodon. Mastodon.social, the flagship instance, has a code of conduct and a list of blocked instances along with - importantly - the reason they are blocked. As you will notice, not one of those instances is blocked for “different opinions” but rather for harassment and illegal content.
The whole point of federation is that instead of joining a single centralized service, you’re joining the federation by joining a specific instance or creating your own instance. If you feel moderators on a certain instance are being heavy-handed you have the option to use a different instance which can still communicate with that other instance.
As the network topology is completely different on a federated platform, moderation actually happens in two layers; instance-to-user and instance-to-instance. Instances each have their own codes of conduct, which users on that specific instance are expected to respect. On top of that, instances also have the ability to block (defederate) with other instances if it is seen as necessary for the protection of the users of that instance.
You may be interested in how this works in practice on Mastodon. Mastodon.social, the flagship instance, has a code of conduct and a list of blocked instances along with - importantly - the reason they are blocked. As you will notice, not one of those instances is blocked for “different opinions” but rather for harassment and illegal content.
Further reading https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking