This request/discussion pops up every once in a while and it’s sad that it seems to be only ever brought up because people wanna block lemmygrad. This kinda explains the dismissive “just move elsewhere” response we get from the devs everytime

However, there are valid reasons to want to block an instance as an user other than “me no like commis >:(”, such as:

• I don’t feel comfortable with a foreign instance’s moderation policy or rules, but I don’t have a case for a instance-wide block
• I’m being targeted by an instance’s users that hasn’t yet been blocked by the admins and they might take a while to make a decision about it
• I might even just think the instance is suspicious, even if there isn’t any post specifically that warrants an instance-wide block

(EDIT: making clear that I don’t think “I don’t like the contents of the instance” is a valid reason. In all examples I gave above, the possibility of an instance-wide block is open. This is not the case for lemmygrad, as there’s absolutely no reason for it to be blocked instance-wide over here. In this case, I fully agree with the devs: go elsewhere)

There might be other good reasons for blocking a foreign instance, I just took this at the top of my head.

Blocking individual communities just doesn’t cut it either because the point of an instance-block isn’t blocking a set of users. When you choose to block an instance, you’re block the admin and the moderation team, along with the users of that instance. You’re cutting off a server that is governed in a way you personally don’t trust. And I don’t see why that decision should reserved to the site’s admin only.

So, to the devs: I get that you probably don’t want to enable anti-communists to anti-communist in your site, hosted with your money and developed through hundreds of hours of your effort. Honestly, I agree. You don’t pretend to be politically neutral and that’s a good thing (it is, in fact, one of the things I like the most about Lemmy). But I think, in this specific case, you should reconsider.

Just saying “yeah, we’re definitely lacking this feature; patches welcome” would be good enough for me, personally.