Good stuff! Thank you for clarifying. This all makes a lot more sense now.

Okay good. Not that I plan to be an issue. 😆

I see, so...

• If the instance my account is on is down or slow, I may not be able to log in.
• Only moderators from my account's server can take action against me? This seems... potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I'm a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?
• Could you elaborate on peering? Does that refer to which Fediverse apps a Lemmy instance can communicate with?

Related question for all you experts: if I have an account on both (for example) lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, what is effectively the difference between them if I can view content from any federated instance?

Are the China Cables documents not valid? https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/read-the-china-cables-documents/

AP News reports that "The documents were given to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists by an anonymous source. The ICIJ verified them by examining state media reports and public notices from the time, consulting experts, cross-checking signatures and confirming the contents with former camp employees and detainees." https://apnews.com/article/china-cables-ap-top-news-international-news-china-race-and-ethnicity-4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47

Your link to a UN document seems to be broken, but this report from the UN cites "Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies." https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region